McDonald's drops use of gooey ammonia-based 'pink slime' in hamburger meat

[Playinghardball]

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McDonald's confirmed that it has eliminated the use of ammonium hydroxide — an ingredient in fertilizers, household cleaners and some roll-your-own explosives — in its hamburger meat.

The company denied that its decision was influenced by a months-long campaign by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to get ammonium-hydroxide-treated meats like chicken and beef out of the U.S. food supply. But it acknowledged this week that it had stopped using the unappetizing pink goo — made from treating otherwise inedible scrap meat with the chemical — several months ago.

Besides being used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers, the compound releases flammable vapors, and with the addition of certain acids, it can be turned into ammonium nitrate, a common component in homemade bombs. It's also widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products. It's regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which classifies it as "generally recognized as safe."

McDonald's decision was first reported this week by the Daily Mail, a blaring British tabloid, which trumpeted it as a victory for fellow Brit Oliver against the monolithic U.S. food industry.

More and see the video at: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/31/10282876-mcdonalds-drops-use-of-gooey-ammonia-based-pink-slime-in-hamburger-meat

[limpyhobbler]

1. that's gross. nt

[RKP5637]

2. Sounds soooo gross! n/t

[Merlot]

3. I long ago gave up the idea that there was ANY meat in a fast food hamburger

just look at the pictures...does that look like anything remotely resembling hamburger? And I ate PLENTY real hamburgers as a kid, so I do know what they look like.

Although I haven't had meat in almost 30 years, I am more opposed to the way animals are treated and the chemicals, drugs, and hormones they are filled with than I am actually opposed to eating meat. I decided that it was healthier not to eat meat.

Look at all the pink slime I've missed in the past 30 years!

[klook]

4. This stuff is used in a WHOLE bunch of foods

It's approved by the FDA for use in many foods, including eggnog, condensed milk, breakfast cereals (including rolled oats), vinegars, mustards, peanut butter, sports drinks, beer, pudding, etc.

Complete list here:
http://www.codexalimentarius.net/gsfaonline/additives/details.html?id=380

Good reason to eat non-processed, organic, locally produced foods whenever possible.

[izquierdista]

9. Just think, next they will be wanting to put ammonia on plants!

Like wheat, soybeans, turnips, and kumquats!

[sendero]

22. Plants eat ammonia..

..... I eat plants. Animals eat all kinds of things I would not eat, but I will eat the animals. If you think you have some kind of point, you don't.

[zeemike]

32. No plants don't eat ammonia they eat the nitrates

that the ammonia binds together.
Plants need three things to grow ans survive...NPK...Nitrogen, Phosphors and Potash...

[AlecBGreen]

33. wow, you fail big time

that is so not an accurate comparison. At all. In any way.

[AlecBGreen]

34. just in case Im not being clear

we feed horse shit to plants. Is it safe for us to eat too?

[joshcryer]

15. NooOO! Not Eggnog!

[tabasco]

5. They oughta make a marketing campaign around this

NOW CHEMICAL SLIME FREE!

I'M LOVIN' IT!

[tibbiit]

6. ACK that picture again!

This grossed me out so much that I quit eating beef at restaurants. I may have nightmares from seeing the picture again. I may never eat soft serve strawberry ice cream again either! lol

Really that's good for them to take that revolting mess out of their food!
Now I know what 100% beef means, not pink slime!

Exclamation point! lol sorry
tib

[Scottybeamer70]

7. Dang..........

if that wouldn't make ya a vegetarian, then I don't know what would.
"inedible scrap meat"...........yeah..........that's what I want for dinner!
OMG.......that is just gross.

[TrogL]

8. But I like pink slime

I think it's the same stuff they put in the strawberry shakes

[christx30]

10. For a better

strawberry shake, go to an actual ice cream shop. I like going to Marble Slab and getting sweet cream with strawberries. I drink that so fast I get an ice cream headache, but I am smiling the whole time.

[SunSeeker]

11. AAAK! I thought they only put that in Chicken Nuggets...

I remember reading a story about the pink slime they make chicken nuggets out of, and the picture looked just like that. Good grief, looks like the only thing I can eat at McDonalds is the apple pie...or is it in that too?

[cstanleytech]

12. What, you thought those were apples?

[aikanae]

13. But what they use next might be worse ...

[cstanleytech]

17. OMG, Soylent green!!!

[Kablooie]

35. You color blind? Obviously Soylent Pink.

[joshcryer]

14. I ain't going to lie, I enjoy a McDouble every now and again.

Poor plebs.

[gadjitfreek]

16. Google "Ban DHMO"...

It's ammonia. Pure and simple. What's with the fertilizer and explosives crap? It's AMMONIA. Ammonia water, to be precise, NH4OH. The hyperbole in this article is unnecessary. Did you know that your local supermarket hits the meat with carbon monoxide to increase the redness and make it look more appetizing? The second-to-last line about being used as an anti-microbial agent in meats and declared safe by the USAD was an afterthought in a highly biased article that uses scary language to push a point. Don't fall for it. You can play this game with pretty much any compound out there. Dihydrogen monoxide is used by the Navy to help them kill people. It is highly toxic in high enough concentrations and breathing in any amount is fatal. It is used in the manufacture of industrial equipment and has been used as an agent against protestors. It's frickin' WATER. H2O. Don't be so quick to believe hyperbole like this article. Anyone who eats at McDonald's is facing far worse health risks than a little ammonium hydroxide. When bagels are made, they are dipped into sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, also used to convert fat into soap before being boiled. Learn chemistry and overcome hyperbole.

[Orrex]

18. Don't be so freaking cavalier about it

I have a friend who died of an overdose of hyperbole.

[Rozlee]

27. And oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are natural too.

But, at higher levels than we're adapted to, they're deadly to life on earth. Just see what happens when we get too much UV radiation from the destruction of the ozone. We're living longer and longer lives in the industrialized countries, but I can't help comparing them to the lives of people I've seen who are long-lived in third world countries. I think the only reason we're living so long is because we're full of preservatives. Our health and quality of life as we age are terrible.

[AngryAmish]

29. What this guy said

[PavePusher]

40. Please, stop trying to inject rational facts....

into a good case of ignorancant moral hysteria.

It ruins the fun, you see...

[Travelman]

42. Thank you

for actually dealing in some actual fact here. This "article" is absolutely off the rails.



Yes! Ban DHMO! Do you people know that a key ingredient in DHMO is used to make nuclear bombs?!?! ZOMG!! In fact, a major component of DHMO is so voiltile, it's responsible for the crash of the Hindenberg!!!!! This is dangerous stuff!!



Unfortunately, too many people will get suckered by almost anything presented in a freightening fashion.

[Kolesar]

19. In the documentary "Food Inc.", they sprayed diseased meat with ammonia to kill microbes

The poor cattle had intestinal disease because they were fed starchy corn instead of grasses. They had evolved to eat grasses.

Hence, those poor critters walked around the feed lot knee-deep in each others' diseased feces.

Have it your way.

[Found in Yonkers]

20. Dammit!

That was the only good part!

[fasttense]

21. I've noticed that hamburgers at fast food places just don't taste like meat anymore.

Even the ground beef you buy in those rolls at the grocery store don't have the taste of meat.

We are now buying beef from a local farmer. There is quite difference in taste and how hungry you feel after eating a real hamburger. I can barely finish a 1/4 pound hamburger from ground beef from our local farm. But those hamburgers from a fast food place still leave me hungry, yet too full to eat.

[onehandle]

23. That's like saying the tobacco industry removed one of the hundreds of chemicals from cigarettes.

There's still a lot more things happening in a McDonalds 'hamburger.'

[GTurck]

24. UGH!!!

I did not know that stuff was in those burgers but frankly I stopped eating most McDonalds a long time ago. Their only decent product is their coffee but someday soon I suppose that will exposed as not what it seems to be.

[LittleGirl]

25. Another victory for Jamie Oliver

It took a British guy to get our meat supply cleaned up????

So glad I gave up McDonald's in the 80s. That's just ewwwwwwwwwwww.

[TBF]

26. When my kids beg for McDonalds I now go to HEB (our grocery chain) to buy

fresh food and pick up a small toy for them. They are liking the new system.

[Rozlee]

28. Did the video say 70% of ALL ground beef we buy

is made from this rendered beef mixture, not just McDonalds and all fast food? I read in "Eat This, Not That," that most fast food joints, including McDonalds, buy this ammonia-based filler at a centralized beef distributor. So, Wendy's, Whataburger, Burger King and all the other chains are possibly also using the process. It's why I stopped eating at all fast food joints completely. But, if he's saying even store bought beef is treated this way, I may never eat another hamburger.

[AngryAmish]

30. Every so often some halfwit takes it upon themselves to ruin McDonald's food

When I was a kid McDonald's smelled like heaven. It was because they fried their fries in beef tallow.

Then a bunch of people decided beef tallow was bad for you. They demanded McDonald's get rid of the beef tallow. McDonald's still wanted to make fries and people still wanted to eat them. So the food scientists at McDonalds searched and decided 100% vegetable transfats were the ticket.

Smart move there.

Beef tallow - much more good cholesterol than bad. Transfat - liquid heart attack.

[Yavin4]

31. And We're Worried About Terrorists Killing Us

McD's will kill more Americans in a day than all Islamic terrorists will do in a century.

[HopeHoops]

36. McFood is simply disgusting ground up shit you wouldn't eat at home.

[IDemo]

37. Damn... now where am I going to go for a McSlime? n/t

[adigal]

38. McDonald's - The Cows Revenge

I think that every time I go past there, all those people eating so unhealthily. I gave it up a few years ago. Thank goodness. Now the smell makes me sick.

[KamaAina]

39. Wow! Looks like MSNBC got punk'd

http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp

Mechanically separated beef has been banned since 2004, due to fears of mad cow disease.

[fasttense]

41. Yet according to your link in Jan. 2012 McDonald's announced

they had ceased using ammonium hydroxide-treated beef in their hamburgers.

So, they must have been putting it into their hamburgers before 2012.

Anyway, I'm sure if we read the regulations carefully there are exemptions to using mechanically separated beef.

[Travelman]

43. Yese, they did...

...but it wasn't over separated meat. Everyone should go read this post and stop to think for a minute rather than flying off the handle at something that sounds "scary" and "gross."

This stuff is used in all sorts of stuff, it's common, and it's not harmful. It is a mild base. Even if you've never eaten McDonald's or indeed any other food treated with this stuff in your life, you have ammonium hydroxide floating around in your bloodstream.



You've just been fear-mongered by MSNBC.

[KamaAina]

44. It's two separate (tee hee) issues

The "pink slime" is mechanically separated meat. Pork and poultry are OK (or at least legal ), beef is not.

Ammonium hydroxide is a chemical used with pink slime AND real meat. It is sensationalistic to call it "the 'pink slime' chemical".

[Politicub]

45. Ugh. What a disgusting pic. But everyone should educate themselves on where their food comes from.

[reACTIONary]

46. Not at all. It looks yummy like a ...

... big dish of pink soft-serve ice cream! Honest, that's what I thought!

[Londoncalling]

47. This is not what McDonalds in the UK is made from...

Our burgers are made from actual meat...So people point out we had Mad-Cow dieases but that is why the industry had to improve so people would buy beef. He also campaigned for raising the standards of how poultary and pigs are farmed too. I have been a big fan of Jamie Oliver since he started out as with The Naked Chef series. Many of his recipes are easy to use and user friendly for men that want to learn to cook. My own father has used his books which has drastically improved his cooking skills.
Some in UK give Jamie Oliver a hard time for daring to speak out and point out things like British school dinners were disgusting and helping to make our children obese. Also for being young and successful. It has been a huge fight for him because kids are used to diets of fat and sugar and their parents don't want to change their own bad diets so try to sabotage any introduction to healthy eating. In both the UK and the USA he is fighting against people that are hellbent on staying fat and unhealthy and passing it on to there kids. According to the message boards elsewhere they want to eat burgers made of pink slime.
He also does good things with his resturants. http://www.fifteen.net/

[wordpix]

48. omg, no wonder!

I had my first taste of a McD's burger since I was a teenager (that was decades ago) recently and could not eat it or even put it in a spaghetti sauce. It tasted like NOTHING or maybe cardboard and now I know why.

GROSSS!!!!