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!

What's in Canadian ground beef?

 Update -- 2019 -- Disney "pink slime" lawsuit settled for whopping $177 million.

From the linked article: "Five years after an infamous ABC News report describing "pink slime" in ground beef created a national uproar, the network's corporate parent Walt Disney (DIS) has settled a defamation case brought by the food company that created the product for more than $177 million, the most ever in a corporate legal case of its kind.

"Meat processor Beef Products Inc. filed suit in 2012 charging that ABC's coverage of its product -- officially called "finely textured beef" -- misled consumers into thinking it wasn't safe to eat."

 The above puts a whole new spin to the story, eh?
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Some time back, the New York Times did a piece on ammonia being used to make meat and fat trimmings from the cutting room floor safe for human consumption. This ammonia treated meat, some call it "pink slime", is used in the manufacture of ground beef in the States. As I read the article I thought, "Is this stuff in Canadian ground beef?"

Add: This post has been hit thousands of times. It is time for an update. First,  pink slime isn’t used in Canadian burgers – this is the word from Health Canada, which says it hasn’t ruled on the product because no one has asked. 

The other name for this product is lean finely textured beef or LFTB. LFTB is made in Canada but it does not use ammonia gas for sterilizing the mix. Read the Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulations for FTB (Finely Textured Beef) or check the chart I've reproduced below

The American product, made with ammonia, may not be being used in Canada but Beef Products, Inc. states quite clearly on their Internet site: "Outside of the US, Beef Products' customers are located in Canada [bold type added], Mexico, and Japan." Maybe it is not the ammonia treated product that is being shipped north to Canada.

One must be careful what one says, especially when the stuff one is writing is being read in Canada, a country famous for "libel freeze" — the filing of libel lawsuits with the goal of silencing critics. As a retired senior I don't need the hassle.

Recently Jamie Oliver made public calls for fast food restaurants to abandon the use of "pink slime." Possibly because of his involvement and the accompanying publicity a number of fast food restaurants have stopped using the product.


A Huffington Post article reported:

McDonald's announced it is no longer using the controversial ground beef additive known as "pink slime" in its hamburger recipe. Taco Bell and Burger King have also reportedly dropped the "slime" from the menu.

So, what else can I add as an update to this post? Well, read what BPI says on its own website. This info refers to meat sold in the States, of course, and not Canada.

"Beef Products, Inc. [is] the world's leading manufacturer of boneless lean beef. . . . "BPI's products are found in the majority of all ground beef produced in the United States. Current production of over 7 million pounds per week, makes BPI the world's largest manufacturer of boneless lean beef in the world. Eating a hamburger from a Quick Service Restaurant or buying ground beef from your local retailer, the chances are you'll be eating product produced by BPI."

Now, read the company description on Hoovers:

"Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) has ground beef down to a science. A top US provider of boneless lean beef, the company grinds more than seven million pounds of meat a week. Its customers include fast-food chains, restaurants, foodservice operators, meat packers, food processors, and the USDA's school lunch program. Its 60-pound blocks of frozen meat chips are used in hamburger patties, ground beef, hot dogs, beef snacks lunch meat, sausages, meatballs, and frozen entrees. The company touts food safety as a priority. It uses two metal detectors to scan beef before and after processing at its Sioux City, Iowa, manufacturing facility. Outside of the US, Beef Products' customers are located in Canada [bold type added], Mexico, and Japan."

Finally, is there any evidence that ammonia is still playing a role in the production of BPI "boneless lean beef"? The BPI site itself make direct reference to the use of ammonia in the  production of their popular product. BPI has an entire section of their online site dedicated to "The use of ammonia compounds in food processing." I had a link to a Canadian producer who used citric acid but the link is now broken.

My wife has stopped buying ground beef. She buys large, intact cuts of beef and grinds them herself, with my assistance. It is easy to do, quick and the final ground beef tastes much better than what we had been buying. Plus, it saves us money! The large cuts of beef sell, on sale, for less than ready-to-use ground beef.

What's wrong with what we eat.

The following is a talk that I found on TED: Ideas worth spreading. I believe it is fine to share this with you as TED supplies embedding code.

Mark Bittman, food writer for the New York Times, gives his views on what's wrong with the way we eat: too much meat, too few plants and too much fast food, too little home cooking about sums it up.

The talk is a little long and has periods where it drags a bit. But, it is a talk given by an adult. I often think that newspapers and the media in general should spend more time being adults. It's fun. It's rewarding.

And it may sell newspapers; then, it may not. But better to go down being an adult than succeed being a Glenn Beck.

Are you knowledgeable or just another know-it-all?

Paul Berton, the editor-in-chief, of The London Free Press recently wrote a piece titled, "Are you knowledgeable or just another know-it-all?"

Yesterday Berton ran a piece on the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest structure. Paul wrote:  "The Burj Dubai, in the city-state that may be the very definition of excess in a modern world, is finally complete. Stretching more than 800 metres into the desert sky, the office tower dwarfs even the world's second tallest structure, Toronto's CN Tower."

Interesting. Just two things that I'd like to add. One: the building was renamed the Burj Khalifa  in honor of the president of the United Arab Emirates. You do recall that it was the UAE that bailed Dubai out of last year’s debt crisis?

So sorry Paul, but you got the name wrong. (I'm sure you're in good company but a fast Google lap didn't turn up any other news organizations making the same error. But, it is a big world and I am sure you are not alone.)

And oh, the world's second tallest structure is not the CN Tower in Toronto; It's the KVLY-TV tower located three miles west of Blanchard, North Dakota. If you want to play the tallest game, you have to call the Toronto tower the second tallest "freestanding" structure. The freestanding is very important as without that word the CN tower would never have been able to make its claim; The Warsaw Radio Mast was hundreds of feet taller but it was a guyed affair and not freestanding.

Oh well, look on the bright side. You can do another column in the are-you-knowledgeable-or-just-another-know-it-all vein and you can take a more generous and forgiving approach this time. Your view will now be tempered with the wisdom of someone who has been-there-done-that.

Maybe, just maybe, you should have kept those editors you let go at Christmas.

Safe Sleeping for Baby

SIDS: "Back to Sleep" Campaign

Cut SIDS Numbers by 50 percent!

All parents of a young child fear Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Crib death is a big reason for the sale of thousands of high tech monitors with loud alarms to alert parents a sleeping baby is in distress.

Now, there is a suitably named campaign aimed at cutting the risk to sleeping infants and babies: The Back to Sleep campaign. Amazingly, simply placing babies on their backs to sleep reduces the risk from SIDS dramatically.

Thirteen years ago the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) first made its recommendation that all healthy infants be placed on their backs to sleep, thus reducing the risk of SIDS. Since then, the percentage of infants placed on their backs to sleep has increased dramatically, and the rates of SIDS have declined by more than 50 percent. 

I know this sounds incredible. My wife says that it is not what she was told when she was a young mother. Yet, shortly after the AAP recommendation, the following groups all joined with the AAP: the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the SIDS Alliance (now First Candle/ SIDS Alliance), the Association of SIDS and Infant Mortality Programs, and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of HRSA. All these groups have launched their own Back To Sleep campaigns to inform parents and infant caregivers about the importance of infants and older babies sleeping on their backs.

Here are the rules.

• Lay your newborn down on her/his back, not on the baby's stomach. Research indicates this position lowers the risk of SIDS.

• Avoid covering your baby with a blanket. Instead, put her/him in a sleeper suit to keep baby warm without blankets. The blankets themselves are a problem and babies should not be allowed to get too warm.

• Provide proper bedding: a firm infant mattress free of pillows, stuffed animals or comforters that could block the baby's airway. Crib bumper should be securely fastened or not used at all. (The public health nurse advised my daughter to completely remove the bumpers from her baby's crib.)

• Check with your pediatrician about alternate sleeping positions if your baby was a peemie who experienced respiratory distress or if your baby has a gastroesophageal reflux. Also check with your pediatrician before introducing your baby to a newborn sleep pillow used to prevent your baby from rolling from her/his side or back onto her/his stomach.allowed to get too warm.

And don't fear the pacifier.

Several studies have found that infants who used a pacifier when going to sleep had a lower risk of SIDS compared with infants who did not. There may be as much as a 60% reduction in SIDS risk with pacifier use at bedtime.

Sleeping on back safer than side

If a baby insists on sleeping on her/his side, position the baby's arms to make turning onto the stomach less likely. Strive to train your baby to sleep on her/his back.


Good luck,
Cheers,
Rockinon

My granddaughter Fiona, above, is fighting the Back to Sleep advice but she is kept off her stomach when sleeping and luckily she hates the prone position at all times.

My take on swine flu gets more support

I mentioned the other day that my take on swine flu has been getting a steady flow of hits. Well, today the Huffington Post carried a piece that adds support to my original post.

See: Flu Season: Factory Farming Could Cause A Catastrophic Pandemic

"So far, only thousands of people have died from swine flu. Unless we radically change the way chickens and pigs are raised for food, though, it may only be a matter of time before a catastrophic pandemic arises."

Then read my post and learn where many people believe the present swine flu originated.

Yours,
Rockinon

Still working on the real post....

I spent some time working on my post on food but it will not be ready until sometime tomorrow. So, please smile at this; Hey, you won't smile at the food post.

Forgive me. I know; I know. It's just a baby picture.

And yet I love the way this little girl is so obviously interested in the puzzle on which her grandmother is working. The little girl went to the doctor for her check-up earlier in the day and the doctor said, "This kid is bright." I'd say he was a bright doctor, very observant.

Note: If you have a SLR digital camera, or any camera that allows the setting of the f/stop, use a large one. Something like f/2 or f/2.8 would be good with a 28mm lens. This will help to throw the background out of focus. I am using a simple, old point and shoot and so do not have this control. I must take what the camera gives me and that is far too much depth of field.

Before shooting this picture I turned off the incandescent ceiling light to prevent having a yellow cast staining the image. I also wiped the little girl's mouth as she is quite into bubble blowing and it does not add to her carefully managed image.

Cheers,
Ken (Rockinon)