Saturday, March 24, 2012

Schools Drop ‘Pink Slime’ Beef Filler Like a Hot Potato - NYTimes.com

Schools Drop ‘Pink Slime’ Beef Filler Like a Hot Potato - NYTimes.com:


‘Pink Slime’ Losing Place on School Lunch Menus

Evan McGlinn for The New York Times
Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Boston no longer serves beef containing “pink slime,” or lean finely textured beef, an ammonia-treated filler.
BOSTON — Andy Gomez, a ninth grader at Brighton High School, was not sure why hamburgers and meatballs had disappeared from the cafeteria, but he was not happy about it. “Today I just ate peanut butter and jelly,” he said. “I don’t like the chicken patty.”
Evan McGlinn for The New York Times
Patties in the school freezer.
The absence of ground beef at lunch last week — at Brighton High and 43 other public schools here — could be explained by a peek into the freezer, where 21 boxes of ground beef products sat, cordoned off from the rest of the meat by a clinical-looking cover of white paper reading “Do not use.”
This is the frozen mass at the center of growing public concern, stoked by news coverage and social media