Pink Slime Plauging the Nation

Check out my speech paper I just turned in. An informational, yet persuasive literation of what this inhumane meat epidemic is and why it is that you should be second guessing your meat.

Pink Slime Plaguing the Nation

            Attention meat lovers: the nation has been plagued with unsightly, horrific, and downright unjust merchandise that has been masquerading as meat for far too long. Its name is pink slime. Pink slime is a serious subject matter that is not only perceived as inhumane and  revolting to animal rights activists and devoted vegetarians, but potentially to you too, meat lovers. People need to inform themselves about this abomination called pink slime that’s plaguing our schools and grocers everywhere. But most importantly, people need to put an end to its production.

            To start with, what is this thing called pink slime? Pink slime is slang for ‘mechanically engineered meat,’ a process in which the USDA- an organization who are supposed to be protecting us- have deemed safe for us to consume. Pink slime’s reputation comes from this process. So let me break it down for you, in order for meat to be packaged and shipped off to stores and restaurants, it needs to be processed. No harm here, right? What happens is the good parts of the animal get cut up and packaged off to be sold, but the other parts- the unmentionables- get otherwise thrown out. They’re scraps, garbage- remember that. Well, these clever companies processing this meat came up with a way to take all the scraps of the animal- the eyes, tendons, the bits lining the guts and intestines- and make money off of it. What they do is take these- trimmings and put them into a center fuse. This tenderizes the “meat” and separates it from the fat. Well you have to imagine this stuff- the lining of intestines and guts- as crawling with all kinds of bacteria. Of course this is nowhere near edible, so in order to make it edible, what they do is drown it in a mixture of water and- this is really nasty part- ammonia. Yes, the same ammonia that you find under your countertops in household cleaning materials, like bleach. I know. So now that the ammonia has killed most of the salmonella and E. coli bacteria, this substance is at the same processing level as the lean parts of the animal, but you can imagine it tastes nowhere near as good. So then what these geniuses do is take all kinds of artificial dyes and flavorings to make this look like a regular piece of meat. Grind it up and it looks exactly like ground meat you’d find in your grocery store isle.

It’s repulsive isn’t it? What is haunting is that up to 15% of this pink slime is allowed in any of our meat that purchase. It acts as filler so the big companies can get more bang for their buck on the lean cuts of meat, without sacrificing the amount being distributed. What’s even more haunting is that this process has been admitted to being used in up to 70% of meat we purchase on a regular basis. Absolutely horrifying. And what if I told you that USDA says that they don’t have to register ammonia on any of the meat labels because they say that it is a process, not an ingredient? At this point, you discover that in at least 70% of the meat you buy, 15% is stuffed with this ammonia injected, mechanically engineered bits of guts that are hardly even allowed on shelves, only because the USDA says it’s okay. And if that isn’t worse enough, you now can’t even decipher the true pieces of meat from the fake! Then to think that this is what is being fed to our children at schools and grocers. Horrifying, simply horrifying.

I can only assume that at this point, you are as angry as I am. Being hand fed food that is told is healthy for us, only to find out that almost one fourth of it wouldn’t of even been considered as table scraps we’d feed to our dogs. So now what? What can we do to stop the spread of pink slime in America? Want to hear the truth? We stop buying it. At this point, the only sure way to make sure if our meat is safe to eat is to sit and watch the butcher grind the meat right in front of our faces. Otherwise, we stand the risk of being cheated and ripped off with meat that companies can get away with mechanically engineering, just as long as nobody talks about. Well guess what, we are talking about it. The only way to stop companies from distributing this abomination is to tell everyone we know about its presence. The more who know, the more who refuse to consume, the less money they get, the less they have reason to distribute. It’s as simple as that. Join me in putting an end to the distribution of pink slime in America. Choose better for our schools, our children; let’s choose better for ourselves.