That would be burgers with ammonia in them! Beef Products Inc., has managed to "convince" the government agencies that it's food is so safe that it doesn't need to be tested anymore to ensure that it is contamination free. As you'll see below, this is hardly the case. This meat is found not only in fast food restaurants, it's also common in grocery stores and in school lunch programs. But thanks to higher quality control standards much of the contaminated meat has not reached the children during lunch at school. And of course, the powers that be don't require Beef Products Inc. to tell anyone that there is ammonia in the meat.
The New York Times printed a story on Dec 30, 2009 bringing all of this to light.
Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned
"With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonalds, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.
But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays."
"Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a “processing agent” and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels."
"Despite some misgivings, school lunch officials say they use Beef Products because its price is substantially lower than ordinary meat trimmings, saving about $1 million a year." (it's all about the bottom line when it comes to the health and well-being of children i guess....)
"....looking to give Beef Products a competitive edge by turning fatty slaughterhouse trimmings into usable lean beef. Mr. Roth and others in the industry had discovered that liquefying the fat and extracting the protein from the trimmings in a centrifuge resulted in a lean product that was desirable to hamburger-makers.The greater challenge was eliminating E. coli and salmonella, which are more prevalent in fatty trimmings than in higher grades of beef. According to a 2003 study financed by Beef Products, the trimmings “typically includes most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass” and contains “larger microbiological populations.”"
"...eventually settled on ammonia, which had been shown to suppress spoilage. Meat is sent through pipes where it is exposed to ammonia gas, and then flash frozen and compressed"
"a former U.S.D.A. microbiologist, said he and other scientists were concerned that the department had approved the treated beef for sale without obtaining independent validation of the potential safety risk. Another department microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime"..."
"“It was frozen, but you could still smell ammonia,” said Dr. Charles Tant, a Georgia agriculture department official. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”"
"the level of ammonia in the beef was similar to levels found in contamination incidents involving chicken and milk that had sickened schoolchildren"
Should you be concerned?
Its hard to say. The body produces it's own ammonia through normal bodily functions, and has ways of eliminating it. The question is how much are you being exposed to? High levels are dangerous. As are concentrated exposures to ammonia.
Think about a fish tank, high levels of ammonia will kill the fish.
Concentrated exposures to ammonia can cause burns, damage lungs or eyes, even causing blindness if one should get it into their eyes and not wash it out quickly.
Here are some snips from the CDC ATSDR website:
"Ammonia is very important to plant, animal, and human life. It is found in water, soil, and air, and is a source of much needed nitrogen for plants and animals. Most of the ammonia in the environment comes from the natural breakdown of manure and dead plants and animals.
Eighty percent of all manufactured ammonia is used as fertilizer. A third of this is applied directly to soil as pure ammonia. The rest is used to make other fertilizers that contain ammonium compounds, usually ammonium salts. These fertilizers are used to provide nitrogen to plants. Ammonia is also used to manufacture synthetic fibers, plastics, and explosives. Many cleaning products also contain ammonia in the form of ammonium ions."
"Levels of ammonia in air that cause serious effects in people are much higher than levels you would normally be exposed to at home or work. However, low levels of ammonia may harm some people with asthma and other sensitive individuals."
"Swallowing even small amounts of liquid ammonia in your household cleaner might cause burns in your mouth and throat. A few drops of liquid ammonia on the skin or in the eyes will cause burns and open sores if not washed away quickly. Exposure to larger amounts of liquid ammonia or ammonium ion in the eyes causes severe eye burns and can lead to blindness."
"Ammonia is a corrosive substance and the main toxic effects are restricted to the sites of direct contact with ammonia (i.e., skin, eyes, respiratory tract, mouth, and digestive tract). "
"There is no evidence that ammonia causes cancer. Ammonia has not been classified for carcinogenic effects by EPA, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), or the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)."
"We do not know if exposure to ammonia causes birth defects, or if it can pass to the fetus across the placenta or to infants via breast milk" CDC ToxFaq's
So maybe it won't kill you, but it just goes to show that you never know what food manufacturers are putting into your food that you don't know about. The FDA doesn't require them to list everything. I mean... wouldn't you want to know if you are consuming a caustic substance? I would think twice before going through the drive through to pick up a burger, or picking up frozen meat patties/hamburgers, etc at the grocery store. Chances are, those frozen meat patties are not ground chuck but liquefied fat processed in a centrifuge to remove the protein and make a cheap product sellable to the hamburger industry.Plus there is no guarentee that this meat product will be contamination free, because as it stands... in spite of the findings by the school lunch oversight safeguards, and other independent labs, Beef Products Inc. is exempt from quality control testing oversight, and exempt from meat recalls even though testing has shown their products are frequently contaminated.
"Dr. Theno, [a] food safety consultant, applauds Mr. Roth for figuring out how to convert high-fat trimmings “with no functional value” into a mult-million dollar "cash cow". So, it's yet another example of the FDA and the USDA looking out for big business, and not protecting the public.
Bon Apetite ~
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