school lunch meat

I was reading blogs and such when I came across this article about "pink slime", a meat product.  I was disgusted to find out that slaughterhouse trimmings were processed (with ammonia!!) into a mushy substance that is then added to ground meat as a filler.  The meat industry then makes more money off of the lower quality product.  Can we say "conspiring men"? Below is a section that deals with school lunches:

"The National School Lunch Program, which forces cafeteria administrators to feed students lunch for $2.68 per student per day, is a microcosm of our cheap food system. Two-thirds of that outlay goes to overhead and labor, leaving much less than a buck to spend on ingredients. No wonder the lunch program is such a massive buyer of pink slime--3.5 million pounds last year alone, the Times reports.


School lunch officials said they ultimately agreed to use the treated meat because it shaved about 3 cents off the cost of making a pound of ground beef.... In 2004, lunch officials increased the amount of Beef Products meat allowed in its hamburgers to 15 percent, from 10 percent, to increase savings.

Three cents off the cost of making a pound of ground beef. Under the severe fiscal austerity that school cafeteria administrators operate under, pinching those three pennies is a rational decision, even if it means subjecting children to ammonia-ridden slime that may contain pathogens.

For its part, the fast-food industry has reacted to the Times revelations, not by renouncing the use of pink slime but rather defending it. According to Associated Press, "Fast-food chains McDonald's Corp. and Burger King Holdings Inc. and agricultural conglomerate Cargill Inc. all use the [Beef Products] meat in their hamburgers. All said they'll keep using the meat and that their products are safe."

For them, billions of dollars in profits depend on pinching a few pennies per pound on inputs. As long as that economic structure remains in place, we can count on continued pathologies in the food system."

Here is the link to the NYTimes article mentioned above (apparently they were the ones that broke the story):  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html

Not a day after reading this, we stopped at a fast food restaurant (rarity and kind of ironic) to get lunches for the kids for a change.  Joseph, who didn't order anything for himself, turned to me and asked if I wanted anything.  Uh, no.