What’s unacceptable for fast food is still served to our kids

It’s been rejected by Taco Bell, Burger King and McDonald’s, but a concoction of ammonia-treated beef by-products continues making a regular appearance in many kids’ school lunches and your local meat counter.

The U.S Department of Agriculture is buying tons of the ground beef filler dubbed “soylent pink” or “pink slime” for school lunch burgers, according to writer David Knowles of the Daily, who spoke with Ross and Burbank about his report on the ammonia-treated meat stuff.

Listen to Writer David Knowles on pink slime in our ground beef

“Basically that product found a way to use the trimmings and the connective tissue that normally would go to dog food, but it treated it with ammonia because this stuff had higher level of pathogens and you had to kill that,” Knowles said.

The product is officially called Lean Beef Trimmings by manufacturer Beef Products, inc. It contains trimmings, fat connective tissue, and other beef by-products. The USDA has ruled it is perfectly safe, despite criticism from food experts.

“You’re taking the stuff that you don’t really want to eat at all in pure form, let alone in ground form,” Knowles said.

“Wait a second, so you’re saying the difference between this stuff, which I could find in the meat counter or in a school lunch, and dog food is that this stuff has been treated with ammonia?!” asked an incredulous Dave Ross.

Even more disturbing, according to Knowles, is kids and consumers alike have no way of knowing whether their burger contains the pink slime.

“If you pick up a package of ground beef, you will not see it labeled that it has this BPI product in it. The labeling restrictions are so lax that you could be buying something that has pink slime in it and not know,” said Knowles.

Numerous petitions calling on the USDA to ban the use of pink slime have started circulating online, and school boards and other groups have started officially objecting to the practice.

There are a few steps you can take to avoid pink slime, including watching the butcher grind your beef or contacting the manufacturer or supplier of your burger beef, or simply avoiding mystery meat altogether.

“I have two kids and they go to school and we certainly don’t want them to eat the ground beef at school,” Knowles said.

-Josh Kerns/My Northwest.com