Gaston schools unsure whether pink slime is in beef

GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — Beef served in lunch line at Gaston County Schools might contain the notoriously named “pink slime.”

Or it might not.

Gaston County Schools Nutrition Director Frank Fields said he doesn’t know if Gaston County Schools purchased beef with lean finely textured beef, the food industry term for what’s been dubbed pink slime. Nearly all the beef Gaston County Schools purchases comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which chooses different beef companies to supply school systems through the National School Lunch Program. The USDA does not require a label to indicate whether the ground beef contains the byproduct.

“To date, we have no way of being aware whether it’s in the ground beef we receive because it’s beef,” Fields said. “There’s really no way for any lunch program nationally to state unequivocally that LFTB (lean finely textured beef) is in the ground beef.”

Beef producers and food industry experts don’t use the slang “pink slime.” They refer to the product as lean finely textured beef. According to the USDA, it’s a meat product derived from a process that separates fatty pieces from beef trimmings to reduce overall fat content.

Ammonium hydroxide is used to reduce the bacteria during the processing of some forms of the beef products. Ammonium hydroxide is used in other processed foods like baked goods, pudding and cheeses.

The method is used by beef processors to get as much usable beef as possible.

“It’s been given a negative name, slang description of it. It has been misrepresented by certain media celebrity chefs in terms of how it’s made and how it’s processed. It has caught the public’s interest but not with all the facts,” Fields said. “It’s the same protein. It is beef. It is just smaller pieces that have been removed from the fat.”

The USDA requires that all meat sold in the U.S. be federally inspected, but it doesn’t require beef that contains the lean finely textured beef to indicate the product’s presence on the label.

“They haven’t been because it’s never been considered by food scientists and regulators to be any different. It’s not coarse ground beef so it looks different,” Fields said. “Physically and chemically it is actually the same thing. It is ground beef. It’s just in a finer texture.”

The USDA recently announced that it will give schools in the National School Lunch Program the choice of selecting products that contain lean finely textured beef and those that do not.

Gaston County Schools will choose beef that doesn’t contain that beef product next school year, Fields said.

Fields doesn’t see the beef product going away any time soon.

“I doubt you’ll see the labels start to list it on an ingredient’s table,” Fields said.

Beef labels might start listing the beef product as something that’s not used instead, he said.

“I think that the food that we receive from the USDA, we are confident that it is wholesome and nutritious,” Fields said.

WSOC