THE BIG LIE ABOUT PINK SLIME IN YOUR GROUND BEEF. pod

IS THAT PINK SLIME IN YOUR BURGERS

Food Travel USA with Elizabeth Dougherty
Album: The TRUTH About Food and Travel 081625
Episode #: 1992
Original Broadcast Date: 05/24/2012

 

In March 2002, Gerald Zirnstein, then a USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) microbiologist, sent an internal email to colleagues at FSIS.  The email was about Beef Products Inc.'s (BPI) product, which USDA called Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB). Zirnstein had recently toured a BPI facility in South Sioux City, Nebraska.  In that email, he described the product as:

"It's pink, it's pasty, and it's slimy looking… I called it pink slime."

The email wasn't meant for the public; it was a blunt, internal description of what he felt was mislabeling and economic fraud, since LFTB was being blended into ground beef and sold as if it were 100% pure meat.
It remained obscure until 2009, when an investigative reporter obtained it during research into meat inspection loopholes.  Once the email surfaced publicly, the phrase "pink slime" stuck — and Zirnstein suddenly became an "involuntary whistleblower."   So: he didn't send it to the press, or advocacy groups. He sent it to his own superiors and colleagues at FSIS, and it only came out years later when investigative reporters pried it loose.

The product, officially known as Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), is made from leftover scraps, spun in a centrifuge to remove fat, and treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria. Zirnstein warned that it wasn't real beef, but the USDA allowed it to be mixed into hamburger meat anyway, unlabeled, and sold to the public as ground beef.

When the story broke nationally in 2012, the backlash was massive. Fast food giants like McDonald's, major grocery chains, and school lunch programs announced they would stop using it. Beef Products Inc. (BPI), the main producer, shut down plants, lost hundreds of millions in sales, and even sued ABC News in one of the largest defamation cases in history. That lawsuit settled in 2017 for at least $177 million.

But here's the truth: there is growing suspicion that pink slime never went away, but instead was quietly rebranded and blended back into the meat supply, and for years, Americans have unknowingly been eating it in restaurants, grocery store beef, and processed foods. Zirnstein, who described himself as an "involuntary whistleblower," paid dearly for telling the truth — pushed out of government service and effectively blacklisted from the industry.

The question is simple — if they've been lying about what's in our beef, what else are they hiding from us?

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FOOD TRAVEL USA FAST FACTS

About the Show

Using the chassis of a food and travel show, Elizabeth Dougherty has carved out her own lane in Talk Radio, covering the contamination of the food supply and the travel restrictions placed upon us by an overreaching government. The show also covers data protection, self-sufficiency, and homesteading-related topics to help protect us from this evil, corrupt system. With Elizabeth as the host, the show has a very different sound from the typical male-oriented talk radio. In combination with terrestrial stations that carry the show, we reach people who don't normally listen to politically-driven talk radio. In addition to the LIVE FEED of the show on Saturday afternoons from 5pm–7pm (Eastern) / 2pm–4pm (Pacific), we produce and distribute a dozen podcast segments each week.

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• Live Broadcast: Saturday, 5 PM