By March of last year, lean finely textured beef (LFTB) had reached celebrity status under the unfavorable moniker “pink slime.” The product—which is made by centrifuging slightly heated fatty beef trimmings to separate out lean meat bits and then treating that meat with ammonia gas to reduce foodborne pathogens —was the subject of thousands of… Continue Reading
The trade press magazine Meat & Poultry has come out with its annual Top 100 rankings of the industry’s biggest companies. In doing the annual rankings, Meat & Poultry discloses the economic damage done to Dakota Dunes, SD-based Beef Products Inc. by last year’s media storm over the use of “lean finely textured beef” by… Continue Reading
JBS Swift, Tyson Fresh Meat, Beef Products Inc. (BPI) and several other companies have been blamed for the 2010 death of a Minnesota man due to E. coli poisoning in a lawsuit filed against the defendants on Jan. 8. Robert Danell, a 62-year-old man with Down Syndrome, died from medical complications days after falling ill… Continue Reading
Editor’s Note: With only a few days of 2012 remaining, it’s time to take a look back at the year. That’s what we will be doing today and tomorrow. We are going to begin with your choices for 2012, those stories that drew the most readership at Food Safety News. We are calling these the… Continue Reading
A former Beef Products Inc. employee has filed a civil lawsuit against a number of media sources, alleging that they “willfully and maliciously” spread false and misleading statements about BPI’s beef filler known as lean finely textured beef (LFTB), a product referred to as ‘pink slime’ by these sources. Those statements, the former employee claims,… Continue Reading
Opinion
Pink Slime vs. lean, finely textured beef. Photos of rats with tumors vs. scientists disputing study methods. Conventionally grown produce vs. local and/or organically grown. Each has been the subject of media “attention.” And as the inaccuracies in the statements reveal, articles on each have too often been published without true understanding, knowledge or representation… Continue Reading
Opinion
To no one’s surprise, Beef Products Inc. (BPI) – maker of the ground beef product that took on the moniker of “pink slime” – filed a defamation lawsuit earlier this month against ABC News and several individuals. As I wrote in March at the height of the media uproar and consumer backlash, the entire pink… Continue Reading
Opinion
The “right to know” is the rallying cry of more and more Americans who are fed up with our unappetizing, unhealthy, secretive food system. Consumers are demanding that Big Food/Ag draw back the curtain on unsavory industry practices, shocking nutritional information and unlabeled ingredients. So what’s industry’s response? They are spending hundreds of millions of… Continue Reading
In the Spring of 2012, a beef product called “Lean Finely Textured Beef,” an ingredient in an estimated 70 percent of America’s ground beef, came under fire because the meat — which is pulled from a cow carcass after the main cuts of beef have been removed and separated from bones and tissue in a… Continue Reading
The most important food product disparagement case to come before Beef Products Inc. v. ABC was dropped into the “in” basket at South Dakota’s First Judicial District in Elk Point, SD. Like this latest case, Auvil v. CBS “60 Minutes” involved a food product being damaged by what was shown and said on television. In… Continue Reading
Beef Product Inc, the maker of Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), now commonly known as “pink slime,” on Thursday filed suit against ABC News, former U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, and a former company employee for alleged defamation of its product, which used to be a component of the vast majority of ground beef in… Continue Reading