No more ‘pink slime’ at Safeway

The words “pink slime” have been on just about everyone’s lips recently.

Earlier this month, ABC broke news that ground beef sold across the country to hungry consumers was mixed with cheap ammonia-laden fillers and made from dog food-quality slaughterhouse scraps. Yum.

Well, Safeway — the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain — has chimed in, announcing today that they are dropping “pink slime” from fresh ground beef in all of their 1,702 stores.

Safeway admits this decision is linked to the recent negative publicity surrounding pink slime:

“While the USDA and food industry experts agree that lean finely textured beef is safe and wholesome, recent news stories have caused considerable consumer concern about this product. Safeway will no longer purchase ground beef containing lean finely textured beef.”

The meat industry has been vigilantly defending the product, which they euphemistically refer to as “lean finely textured beef.” They say that it’s safe to eat, and that the anti-microbial agents they use to kill off E. coli and other nasty bugs are not additives and therefore don’t need to be noted on food labels.

Keep in mind that this only affects the fresh ground beef sold in Safeway stores, not other foods – even ground beef – prepared by other companies.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week that it will soon disclose which of its suppliers use the product so that school officials can make their own decisions about usage.

The Daily already figured out which retail stores sell fresh ground beef with pink slime.

The larger issue here is that most Americans have no idea what’s in the food they buy. It takes words like slime, sludge, and dog food to get us interested in what we put in our bodies.

And it literally took a whistle-blowing USDA scientist to bring this information forward, a scientist that no longer works at the USDA.

Safeway now joins retailers like Publix, HEB, Whole Foods and Costco who have all said they will sell only fresh ground beef that is additive-free.