ByThe Late Derry Brownfield
March 22, 2011

NewsWithViews.com

Today, the giant beef packers slaughter, cut the beef into primal cuts, put the product in boxes, load them on trucks and quickly the meat is on the way to retail outlets all across the land. If a high-dollar restaurant wants to offer its customers a prime rib or truly fine dining, they must age the meat themselves. The typical consumer never gets to taste the quality of beef that once adorned our American kitchens.

To add insult to injury, or to add profits to the packers, the industry is now putting what was once dog food into people food. It’s a new process called “ADVANCED MEAT RECLAMATION.” It all began when Eldon Roth invented a process to remove every ounce of meat from the bone. He took his idea to the CEO of IBP, Robert Peterson. In 1980 IBP was the nation’s largest beef processor and Eldon Roth approached Peterson with the hopes of selling him his newly invented equipment. Peterson was not interested in buying Roth’s equipment, but wanted to sell Roth his bones. It’s easy to remove the meat from the long bones, but a fair amount of meat exists in the backbones, which is nearly impossible to extract. The back bones also contain the spinal cord and, up until Mr. Roth came along, the vertebrae were processed into dog food.

Mr. Roth had a better idea. He founded a company called BEEF PRODUCTS. His new company began mixing the entire vertebrae, spinal cord and all, along with what the industry calls 50-50 (trimmings and fats), grinding it into a mixture of pink froth, adding ten percent anhydrous ammonia to kill pathogens such as E-coli and salmonella and selling it to Cargil, McDonald’s Corp, Burger King, the school lunch program and anyone wanting to cheapen the cost of hamburger. The use of this product lessens the cost of a pound of ground beef by about three cents.

One major problem existed—the concoction smelled like ammonia. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) had given Roth permission to add 10% percent ammonia, but without letting anyone know, the ammonia mixture was cut to the point that it wasn’t strong enough to control the pathogens. Large recalls of ground beef took place and the USDA determined that “at least some of the product was no longer receiving the full lethality treatment.” The FDA had okayed the use of ammonia saying, without labeling, it was safe when used as a processing agent.

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