Read what the readers of the NYT said about ammonia in beef.

A few years ago The London Free Press reporter Jonathan Sher made us all aware of the amount of lead dissolved in London, Ontario, tap water. At the time I thought, this is why we need newspapers and good journalists.

Now, the New York Times is making me again aware of the importance of newspapers with their investigation into ammonia treated ground beef in the States.

If newspapers ever decide to charge for their online information, I for one would consider buying The New York Times.

If you have read this far but are not sure what this is all about, please read my post asking, "What's in Canadian ground beef?"
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Here is the link to more of the comments on the NYT site in response to their ammonia in ground beef article.

When I read about burger fixings described as: "a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips" made of "trimmings 'typically includ[ing] most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass' and contain[ing] 'larger microbiological populations'", which have been processed by "turning fatty slaughterhouse trimmings into usable lean beef [by] liquefying the fat and extracting the protein from the trimmings in a centrifuge" I wholeheartedly agree with Mr Zirnstein's assessment of the result as "pink slime."

New Year's resolution: Vegetarianism.
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I realize that most NYT readers may not even know a farmer and I am sorry for you. I have the luxury of raising my own meats on my farm. This article reinforces my reasoning for rejecting the corporate industrialized thinking that has hijacked our food system. Animals and the life-sustaining food they can provide us are no longer treated with respect, only viewed as a commodity. The idea that a silver bullet technology (ammonia, irradiation, whatever) or some government agency is going to make this flawed model wholesome and safe is delusional. You consumers and the animals you eat will continue to be abused until you rise up and demand real changes in the entire system.
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Oh my God, this is truly sick! First they raise the animals in shockingly miserable conditions while pumping them full of hormones, antibiotics, and dirty feed, and then they inject the meat with AMMONIA?!

INSANITY!!!

This only strengthens my commitment to veganism. How any intelligent person can eat this putrid poison is beyond me.
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Some years back, it became popular to say that corporations' only responsibility was to make money for their investors. And oddly, that became some sort of conventionally accepted idea. But that was really a new, and very dangerous, idea: that these private companies owed nothing to their customers/"consumers"; that they owed nothing to their employees; that they owed nothing to their communities or nation.

No one "owes nothing" but to make a profit. The ills that proceed from such a pernicious belief are many, and this situation with our food is one.
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I wish this last person could have a chat with an online editor I sometimes mention who likes to babble on about capitalism. Today's capitalism is not the capitalism that I knew as a boy.

I blogged on this awhile back: Capitalism: the best system?
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Cheers,
Rockinon!