Politics & Government

Trace Amounts of Pink Slime May Be in Kids' Lunches

Local school districts heavily limit the use of the beef filler.

A viscous pink food goo has many local parents and residents turning green, especially as concerns mount about whether Seacoast children are unknowingly ingesting the chemical-washed substance.

School Administrative Units and each told Patch that the majority of their ground beef doesn't contain ammonium hydroxide-cleansed ground beef trimmings — a USDA-approved filler referred to as "pink slime."

However, local schools do receive "commodity ground beef" once a month from the federal government, which Director of Food Services Trish Simas said does contain "trace" elements of the substance, officially known as "lean finely textured beef product."

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Simas said that federal ground meat accounts for only 10 percent or less of the beef used at WHS and other SAU 21 schools each month, as the district orders most of its meat from a vendor that has assured them pink slime isn't used during their grinding process.

While Simas doesn't believe there is a health risk posed by ingesting pink slime, she does feel society as a whole should move away from processed foods as much as possible, outlining pink slime is a minor character in a substantial list of gross food additives.

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"If anyone's eating hot dogs, this probably isn't something they'll be too worried about," said Simas. "It’s an awful thing to say, but if anyone's eating hot dogs, they probably shouldn't be too concerned about this.

"I don’t think that it's harmed me in any way because it’s a USDA-approved filler. It's approved — to me that’s good enough... If the USDA tests it and approves it — and their scientists know way more about it than you and I do — I trust our government to say it’s OK. I just do."

Pink slime, according to the USDA, is made by washing beef trimmings with ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria before removing the fat, grinding the trimmings into a paste and packaging it in block form.

The filler is legally labeled as "beef" on most ingredient lists, according to the USDA, because it is made from beef parts. The USDA reported, in a release attached to this article as a PDF, that pink slime comprised only 6.5 percent of beef provided as a part of the National School Lunch Program in 2011.

The substance started to turn stomachs earlier this year when fast food giants like McDonald's and Taco Bell announced they would no longer use the filler. The USDA came out with a statement last week reaffirming the safety of the product, although they also stated they will start allowing school districts to choose whether they want pink slime in their commodity beef.

SAU 90 Superintendent Kathleen Murphy said her district tries to provide "nutritious" and "high quality" food choices to Hampton students, and she said she is concerned about pink slime because "people expect us to serve high quality food to our children."

"That's the No. 1 priority," she said. "It’s really tantamount to the work that we do that the product is safe to the kids. That’s critical in the delivery of their meals."

Simas strongly pointed out that lean finely textured beef product isn't only found in school lunches. She said many grocery stores also use the product, and said it's likely found in inexpensive, prepackaged ground beef sold in area grocery stores that don't prepare the beef on site.

More and more WHS students are requesting chicken and turkey in their school lunches over ground beef by roughly "three- or four-to-one", said Simas. While she said there is a trend away from beef, she urged locals to be cognizant of both the health risks of overconsuming red meat as well as the substances that might be in all foods.

"I’m not appalled by it, but I’d rather not see it either," said Simas, referring to pink slime. "There are a lot of things in a lot of foods. A new thing will be out there next week that'll be just as shocking if it gets out in the public."


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