re: 70% of supermarket ground beef contains "pink slime"

Not surprisingly, ABC did a horrible job of explaining what is in this product and how its made. One of the guys I know from grad school here has a blog about meat in general but has written a post about this in particular. I would urge you all to read it to gain a better understanding of lean finely textured beef. The Meat of the Issues

Pieces like this count on an uneducated consumer who is so far removed from agriculture that they have no idea how we do things or why we do them and will sadly believe the slanderous things they see put out by other people who are also removed from ag.

In the last 50-60 years we have made huge advances in efficiency, health, and overall management to produce a safe, cheap, and wholesome product through the use of SCIENCE backed technologies and research. These have made us victims of our own success since a small percentage of us produce the food for everyone and we therefore deal we an often misinformed consumer. If you choose not to buy ground beef that has this in it that is perfectly fine, just don't do it due to an irresponsible newspiece.

Sorry for the length but this is somewhat of a touchy topic to me since animal agriculture (beef in particular) is where I make my living. I think it's unfortunate that in today's world of social media one "whistle blower" can give an entire industry a black eye by reporting fallacies while knowing the average consumer won't bother to check on things for themselves.