Monday, March 26, 2012
School districts including Fairfax County are following grocery retailers’ lead in pulling beef with “pink slime” off the shelves – but what about the other foods served in our cafeterias?
The news reported by Patch Friday couldn’t be better. Pink slime is making its exit from Fairfax County Public Schools cafeterias this spring. FCPS joins the growing list of schools districts, such as New York City and Miami-Dade County, that will remove beef with the additive beginning in the fall (per Food and Nutrition Services for FCPS, the district plans to have new beef in place by April once the current inventory is exhausted). Schools in Boston already have already replaced it. These actions follow a rapidly growing national response by major grocery chains to pull beef laced with “boneless lean beef trimmings” (aka waste meat) off the shelves. Nothing forces change like the possibility of lost revenue – and unhappy parents. The “…
Friday, March 23, 2012
Grocery store chains have recently spoken out on their ground beef standards. Some are pulling the lean finely textured beef, others never carried it.
Nationally, there has been wildfire around grocery stores that carry Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB) after a former United States Department of Agriculture scientist said that 70 percent “of the ground beef we buy at the supermarket contains something he calls 'pink slime,'" according to an ABC report. LFTB, the hot topic of late, is "waste" meat and fat that is often ground and turned into processed meat products or combined with higher quality meat to make low-fat ground beef. Because beef trim is often filled with E. Coli and salmonella, it's treated with ammonium hydroxide, creating "pink slime," a term coined by some scientists who claim the resulting product "isn't really beef." Grocery stores are now rolling out releases making …
As national outcry over ammonia-treated beef continues, county schools say they'll replace hamburgers served in schools next month.
Amidst a national outcry over U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to purchase ammonia-treated ground beef for national school lunch programs, Fairfax County Public Schools has plans of its own to kiss the substance — dubbed "pink slime" — goodbye. While FCPS does not receive beef products from the USDA, schools spokesman John Torre said the beef patties sold to county schools by another vendor do contain Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), the "waste" meat and fat that is often ground and turned into processed meat products or combined with higher quality meat to make low-fat ground beef. Because beef trim is often filled with E. Coli and salmonella, it's treated with ammonium hydroxide, creating "pink slime," a term coined by some …
Katy Luby
7:09 pm on Monday, March 26, 2012
Mary, Great article! I agree that the food our kids are fed at school is not really as healthy as it is "spun" to be! I still can't figure out why it is so complicated to serve fresh, uncooked veggies and fruit as well as to find easily prepared proteins, and whole grains for our kids to gobble down at lunch! I hope we can eventually get back to a place where the food our kids are served is not … more ›