Update: This morning (Saturday) on Up! w/Chris Hayes they showed the Branstad video where he defends pink slime. According to Branstad, it is the tone of the conversation that is poisoning us, not the slime. Branstad’s speech at ISU was earlier this week. Watch:
fooddemocracynow.org/sign/stop_pink_slime
Action Alert from Food Democracy Now!
[Tuesday,] Governor Terry Branstad and Representative Steve King, along with various proponents of the industrialized ag model, have come to the defense of pink slime. That’s right, that goo-like substance that the Industrial Meat Factories (and now politicians) deceptively call “lean, finely textured beef” or “LFTB”, a ground beef filler treated with a blast of ammonia, is being defended and debated at Iowa State University as we write.
Colorado rancher, Mike Callicrate, traveled to ISU to set the record straight: “This is industrial ag versus family agriculture. We’re here to stand up for America’s family farmers and America’s consumers.”
In case you haven’t heard of Pink Slime, it’s that mysterious meat by-product that appears in 70% of hamburgers sold in the U.S. [1] Recently, a number of USDA scientists turned whistleblowers and some media attention have turned the entire meat industry (and Iowa politics) upside down by exposing the fact that the vast majority of ground beef contains this mysterious substance – and is found in our children’s school lunches.
Click here to tell Secretary Vilsack – No pink slime in school lunches!
The USDA, which planned to purchase 7 million pounds of pink slime for school lunches, announced that it would allow public schools to opt out of buying meat containing Pink Slime. [2] This, however, does not give parents and children the opportunity to opt out of eating it at school if the school chooses to buy it.
Enough is enough! Pink Slime has no business being fed to our children in America’s school lunches. Politicians have claimed that this is a “safe, wholesome, food product” and “consumers can rely” on it. Consumers have said, “No!” and it’s time our representatives listen to the people and get the slime out of our food and our children’s food.
Blog For Iowa 
Seventy percent of US hamburger contains up to 25% per pound of “pink slime” which consists of the slaughterhouse floor wastes treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill E. coli and Salmonella bacteria.
The problem is, ammonium hydroxide does NOT inactivate mad cow prions which may be part of the ankle-deep muck of blood, fats, tissue and scraps on the floor:
Slaughterhouses are required to remove “SRM” – specified risk materials- the parts of a cow with the highest concentrations of prions. SRM include the skull, brain,ganglia, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord and small intestine. Power tools, including chain saws, are used to cut up the carcasses.. It is unavoidable that potentially prion infected wastes from high risk tissues end up on the blood-soaked slaughterhouse floors – to be incorporated into the pink slime. See pink slime video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByxaIr2Cs-Y
Alzheimer’s is a prion disease – 6 million US victims Dr. Claudio Soto, Univ/Texas .http://www.alzheimers-prions.com/pdf/CLAUDIO-SOTO-CONFIRMS-AD-IS-PRION-DISEASE-OCT-2011.pdf and http://www.alzheimers-prions.com/ .
Pink slime is a likely pathway to deliver infectious prions to an unsuspecting public from huge vats of commercially processed hamburger, including to school children at risk for autism which has reached epidemic proportions.. The Prion Institute in Alberta, Canada, is researching Autism as a prion disease
http://prioninstitute.ca/index.php?pahttp://prioninstitute.ca/index.php?page=webpages&menucat=42&id=26&action=displaypage&side=1ge=webpages&menucat=42&id=26&action=displaypage&side=1
The USDA provides 7 milllion pounds of pink slime hamburger for US school lunches annually.
Helane Shields, Alton, NH hshields@tds.net
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