Uh, what's really in that meat?

I was looking through the popular Eat This, Not That feature of Men’s Journal magazine - hey, I’m the maven and I need to scout through everything! - and saw this:

Fast Food Hamburger:

“It comes from a cow, yes, but before being stuffed in the bun of a Whopper or Big Mac, fast-food hamburger patties pass through the hands of a company called Beef Products. Beef Products specializes in taking slaughterhouse trimmings traditionally used only in pet food and cooking oil and turning them into patties. The challange is getting this by-product meat clean enough for human consumption, as both E. coli and salmonella like to concentrate themselves in the fatty deposits. So how does Beef Products go about “cleaning” the meat? With an approach similar to what you might use in your bathroom—by using ammonia.
 
See, the company has developed a process for killing beef-based pathogens by forcing the ground meat through pipes and exposing it to ammonia gas. And not only has the USDA approved the process, but they’ve also allowed those who sell the beef to keep it hidden from their customers. At Beef Products’ behest, ammonia gas has been deemed a “processing agent” that need not be identified on nutrition labels. Nevermind that if ammonia gets on your skin, it can cause severe burning, and if it gets in your eyes, it can blind you. As an ingredient in one of the foods we consume most, our government doesn’t even deem it important enough to inform eaters of its presence.
 
Add to the gross-out factor the fact that after moving through this lengthy industrial process, a single beef patty can consist of cobbled-together pieces from different cows all over the world—a practice that only increases the odds of E. coli contamination. So if you’re set on the challange of eating fresh, single-source hamburger, pick out a nice hunk of sirloin from the meat case and have your butcher grind it up fresh. Hold the ammonia.”

That bit of disgusting information led back to something I’d seen just the other day about the processed poultry and pork that ends up in well, processed meat products like bologna, hotdogs and such. 

We’ve joked for years that if you saw what went into such ‘meats’ you’d never eat a hotdog again. That was actually the least of it - since we were talking about the less savory (by our American 21st century standards) parts of the animals, and perhaps the occasional ‘insect’.

What your ‘processed’ food products now contain is called ‘mechanically separated’ meat.

This is a picture of mechanically separated ‘poultry’ - destined for products like chicken nuggets:

Oooh, yum! Back in the 1960’s food processors figured out they’d make a lot more money by picking those bones absolutely clean - by high pressure sieve machines. Well, it takes the residual meat plus a lot other things you’d rather not have - like icky disease causing bacteria. No worries! It’s all washed in ammonia. That’s right. And since ammonia doesn’t take very good, it’s then artificially re-flavored so you can stomach it.

This is also much of what finds its way into bologna, salami, pepperoni, that reformed ‘chicken’ or ‘turkey’ breast product in your sandwich and so much more.

Now McDonald’s is saying that they no longer use ‘mechanically separated’ poultry - “as defined by the federal government” in their McNuggets. That’s a clever bit of wording, isn’t it? But what do you think is in the rest of the frozen chicken nuggets that find their way into places like schools?

And what about beef? Well, actually the FDA said you can’t do this with beef since the (BSE) Mad Cow Disease scare in 2004. But it’s perfectly alright to do it with pork, turkey and chicken?

If that information hasn’t made you hungry, watch how they really do make Meat Smoothies … uh, I mean hot dogs: