{"id":421,"date":"2010-01-03T21:21:25","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T02:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=421"},"modified":"2010-01-07T00:50:50","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T05:50:50","slug":"the-not-so-great-american-hamburgers-secret-ingredient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=421","title":{"rendered":"The Not-So-Great American Hamburger&rsquo;s Secret Ingredient"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Michael Moss, NEW YORK TIMES, December 30, 2009<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/pinkslime.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"pinkslime\" border=\"0\" alt=\"pinkslime\" align=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/pinkslime_thumb.jpg\" width=\"190\" height=\"126\" \/><\/a> The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as <a title=\"In-depth reference and news articles about Salmonella enterocolitis.\" href=\"http:\/\/health.nytimes.com\/health\/guides\/disease\/salmonella-enterocolitis\/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier\">salmonella<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>Officials at the <a title=\"More articles about the U.S. Agriculture Department.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/a\/agriculture_department\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">United States Department of Agriculture<\/a> endorsed the company\u2019s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli \u201cto an undetectable level.\u201d They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.<\/p>\n<p>With the U.S.D.A.\u2019s stamp of approval, the company\u2019s processed beef has become a mainstay in America\u2019s hamburgers. <a title=\"More information about McDonald&#39;s Corp\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/news\/business\/companies\/mcdonalds_corporation\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">McDonald\u2019s<\/a>, 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. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/31\/us\/31meat.html\" target=\"_blank\">[Read rest of article]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trimmings from the outside of beef carcasses, ground and treated with ammonia, are a staple ingredient of American school and fast-food hamburgers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[150,164,157,165,152,151,126,156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}