Pink slime

Pink slime (also known as lean finely textured beef or LFTB, finely textured beef, or boneless lean beef trimmings or BLBT) is a meat by-product used as a food additive to ground beef and beef-based processed meats, as a filler, or to reduce the overall fat content of ground beef. As part of the production process, heat and centrifuges remove the fat from the meat in beef trimmings. The resulting paste, without the fat, is exposed to ammonia gas or citric acid to kill bacteria. In 2001, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the product for limited human consumption. The product, when prepared using ammonia gas, is banned for human consumption in the European Union and Canada. In March 2012, an ABC News series about "pink slime" included claims that approximately 70% of ground beef sold in US supermarkets contained the additive at that time. Some companies and organizations stopped offering ground beef with the product. "Pink slime" was claimed by some originally to have been used as pet food and cooking oil and later approved for public consumption, but this was disputed in April 2012, by both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) administrator responsible for approving the product and Beef Products, Inc. (BPI), the largest US producer of the additive. In September 2012, BPI filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC for false claims about the product. By 2017 BPI was seeking $1.9 billion in damages. On June 28, 2017, ABC announced that it had settled the suit. Terms of the settlement were at least$177 million (US). Counsel for BPI stated that this was at that time the largest amount ever paid in a media defamation case in the United States. The product is regulated in different manners in various regions. In the US, the product is allowed to be used in ground beef, and it can be used in other meat products such as beef-based processed meats. The use of ammonia as an anti-microbial agent is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and is included on the FDA's list of GRAS (generally recognized as safe) procedures, and is used in similar applications for numerous other food products, including puddings and baked goods.