NEW YORK
(AP) -- "Pink slime" was almost "pink paste" or "pink
goo."
The
microbiologist who coined the term for lean finely textured beef ran through a
few iterations in his head before he decided to send an email about the filler
to a co-worker at the U.S. Department of Agriculture a decade ago. Then, the
name hit him like heartburn after a juicy burger.
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AP Photo/Nati Harnik
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"It's
pink. It's pasty. And it's slimy looking. So I called it `pink slime,'"
said Gerald Zirnstein, the former meat inspector at the USDA. "It
resonates, doesn't it?"
The pithy
description fueled an uproar that resulted in the main company behind the
filler, Beef Products Inc., deciding to close three meat plants this month. The
controversy over the filler, which is made of fatty bits of beef that are
heated and treated with ammonium to kill bacteria, shows how a simple nickname
can forever change an entire industry.
In fact,
the beef filler had been used for decades before the nickname came about. But
most Americans didn't know - or care - about it before Zirnstein's vivid
moniker was quoted in a 2009 article by The New York Times on the safety of
meat processing methods.
Soon
afterward, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver began railing against it. McDonald's and
other fast food companies later discontinued their use of it. And major
supermarket chains including Kroger and Stop & Shop vowed to stop selling
beef with the low-cost filler.
Bettina
Siegel, a food blogger who posted an online petition asking the USDA to stop
using the filler in school lunches, said the controversy isn't based on the
term alone. She said consumers are just upset that the filler is not what they
think they're getting when they buy "100 percent ground beef."
But Siegel
acknowledges that the name doesn't hurt her cause, either. She said the term
"filled a vacuum" in the public arena about the filler; her petition,
"Tell the USDA to STOP Using Pink Slime in School Food" had more than
200,000 signatures within a week.
Beef
Products, which makes the filler, blames its plant closings on what it calls
unfounded attacks. About 650 jobs will be lost when plants in Amarillo, Texas,
Garden City, Kansas, and Waterloo, Iowa close on Friday. Another plant in South
Sioux City, Neb., will remain open but run at reduced capacity.
Still, the
company, based in South Dakota, said it's not considering changing the filler's
name. Instead, Beef Products set up a website, beefisbeef.com, to combat what
it calls "media-perpetuated myths" about the filler.
Meanwhile,
the author of the term "pink slime" makes no apologies about his
creation. Zirnstein, who has since left the USDA, said he thinks "pink
slime" is a better descriptor than "lean finely textured beef."
"It
says it's lean. Great. But it doesn't describe what kind of lean it is,"
said Zirnstein, who doesn't think the product should be mixed into beef. "Textured.
What does that mean?"
Follow
Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi
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