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Meet the man who called it 'pink slime'

March 25, 2012 @ 5:32 pm (Updated: 5:51 pm - 3/25/12 )

Almost everyone has heard the name 'pink slime' which describes bits of cartilage, scrap cow parts and other chemically-treated parts that end up on U.S. ground beef. Most people don't know the name Gerald Zirnstein. He's the former government scientist who came up with that term.

Zirnstein is now unemployed. On his LinkedIn profile, Zirnstein says he is "pursuing a new career position" in the food, biotechnology or pharmaceutical industry.

He's been looking for a job since he blew the whistle on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's use of unlabeled beef by-products that were ending up in hamburgers in grocery stores, schools and fast food chains across the country.

PinkSlimeZirnstein says he made the pink slime reference to a fellow scientist in an internal, private email. That email became public, leading to outrage from consumer groups.

Since the story broke, all major grocery chains - including Safeway, Albertson's, QFC and Fred Meyer locally - have stopped buying the product the meat industry refers to as "finely textured beef."

Finely textured beef is made from beef trimmings that are heated to soften fat and then spun in a centrifuge to separate the meat. A puff of ammonium hydroxide, an ammonia and water mix, is used to kill bacteria.

The USDA at first said the product was safe, then decided to allow school districts to opt out of using the beef in school lunches. The government has at least seven million pounds of the stuff they were planning to ship to schools.

"You look through the regulations and a lot of that stuff was never approved for hamburger. It was under the radar," said the 54-year-old Zirnstein, who lives outside Washington, D.C. with his wife and 2-year-old son. "It's cheating. It's economic fraud," he told Reuters.

Zirnstein even worked in a meat plant growing up in Kansas. He has known about the "pink slime" since 2002 when he was working as a USDA food scientist and was assigned to a project to determine what was going into ground beef and whether the ingredients met federal regulations.

At the same time, the beef industry was asking the government to endorse a new product they called "lean finely textured beef" that was largely trimmings typically used for pet food and cooking oil. The USDA officials approved it.

Zirnstein says he was disgusted, and made his opinion known to co-workers in an email that called the processed product "pink slime." The email was later released to the New York Times as part of a Freedom of Information request for a 2009 investigative article on food safety. The newspaper article mentioned the slime reference in passing.

"I am really an involuntary whistleblower," says Zirnstein, who has no regrets about coming up with a name for the product which he's most upset about because "it isn't freaking labeled."

"It looks like pink slime," he says. "It is."

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver also talked about the beef by-product on his show almost a year ago. In the video below, Oliver says 70 percent of America's beef is treated with ammonia.

Since all this talk about beef of questionable health and safety has come out, have you changed your eating habits?

By Linda Thomas

AP file photo

More from Linda Thomas

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Comments (11)


  • Add A Comment

  • Snout wrote...
    Funny how
    March 25, 2012 7:22 pm
    all of a sudden there are a bunch of Limey cooks telling the rest of us how to eat. There's this sod, the dude who wears tight shirts and glasses, the guy with the bleached crazy hair, etc etc. Go away.
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  • fartforce1 wrote...
    No Snout, not go away. Thank you Jamie Oliver. Great Job!
    March 25, 2012 7:25 pm
    Lets thank those who help us, or wold you rather live with blinders on for your whole life?
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  • JavaTart wrote...
    Agree with you fartforce1...
    March 26, 2012 11:17 am
    ... and I feel sorry for you Snout ... I shudder to think of the synthetic swill you gobble up every week!
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  • kegill wrote...
    He's American
    March 25, 2012 8:16 pm
    @snout : Gerald Zirnstein - the subject of this article - lives in the US and used to work for USDA. He's not a Limey. Nor a cook. Fascinating that you make a negative comment based on the closing graph. @Linda - thanks for the profile. How did the email become public? (I've not followed the details of the story.) RE your question : we've not been regular consumers of fast-food burgers for a long time but the pink slime story lead me to pass on a FF burger last week. I've been buying organic hamburger for spaghetti sauce and such in hopes that the quality is better. Maybe I'll revert to my mom's process - buy chuck and grind it myself.
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  • Ted Bundi wrote...
    When going to college
    March 26, 2012 7:54 am
    I worked in a restaurant that I put in a soy product filler, to spaghetti meat sauce, that looked and tasted just like meat. I think now it must have been way better than pink slime.
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  • fourstringfuror wrote...
    No Change
    March 26, 2012 10:32 am
    It hasn't changed my eating habits one iota. This controversy was crafted, agitated, and then "exposed" by the media, including a willing staff at mynorthwest.com. Disappointing.
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  • Randy from Woodinville wrote...
    I'm thinking about Pink Slime more than I was
    March 26, 2012 10:32 am
    And I'm making decisions accordingly. I know that Fast "Food" isn't good for me, and have been eating less of it every year... but sometimes ya just gotta swing by Dick's. At home we try to go organic whenever possible in both beef & chicken and we HOPE we can trust the "Organic" label to mean just that: nothing else added and only good, healthful methods used in growing. When all is said and done we have to be able to trust those in charge of food safety... and that's a frightening prospect!
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  • mnpat wrote...
    I think most of us would be shocked, shocked I tell you
    March 26, 2012 12:03 pm
    by what we would find in just about anything we digest....from sausage, hotdogs, bread, per-packaged veggies, sauces etc.......more concerned with how food is prepared.
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  • roomtemp wrote...
    Nah, my eating habits haven't changed...
    March 26, 2012 12:27 pm
    I rarely eat fast food. When I want hamburger I snag some chuck, round, or sirloin on sale and toss it in the meat grinder. I didn't always do this, it's just that a lot of hamburger started tasting awful a few years back. Now we know why eh? I guess the taste buds don't lie.

    I'll take a pass on the ammonia seasoning, thanks...

    'Store trim' is usually pretty good stuff if you don't want to grind it yourself.

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  • TomCother wrote...
    Are you kidding me???
    April 10, 2012 10:41 am
    What we have all been exposed to here is a classic example of media sensationalism aimed at ratings rather than facts. Let's all be good consumers and educate ourselves before we jump on the ban wagon. There are a plenty of credible sources out there we can use to make our own decisions. "A well informed consumer has the tools to, and will, make good decisions".
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  • turneran wrote...
    Thank you
    April 19, 2012 11:08 am
    I agree, consumers should be looking to professionals and fact-based outlets. I have personally seen lean finely textured beef and would still be comfortable feeding it to my family and consuming it myself. The only reason it would usually be sent to so-called "dog food" is because it takes an eternity to get the little bits of meat out of subcutaneous fat. It's beef just the same as a ribeye, t-bone or roast.
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