Food Safety Magazine, June/July 2012

GUEST EDITORIAL
By Eric Mittenthal, M.S.
Cutting Out the Fat

The last few months have brought unprece- dented attention to lean finely textured beef (LFTB), a product that was unfairly reviled in mainstream and social media as “pink slime.” Some critics have been extreme in their claims, erroneously calling it a filler, an additive or something that was previously used in pet food. While there were a variety of concerns raised about LFTB, at its heart, the main concern among consumers seemed not to be related to food safety, but to perceived deception. There was no intention to hide the product, and makers regularly talked about it to the media. The Washington Post carried a 2008 Business Section cover story with the headline “Engineering a Safer Burger” that featured one of the makers. The same company appears in a high profile film about the U.S. food supply.

Still, the storm that played out in the media and social media space offers a forecast of things to come and the need to respond swiftly, effectively and frequently about meat processing.

The true story of lean finely
textured beef

In the case of LFTB, the meat starts with trimmings, which are small cuts of beef with fat attached that are not connected to a bone. To separate the meat from the fat, the trimmings are warmed to about 100 °F, which is approximately body temperature. The trimmings are placed in a centrifuge so the fat is liquefied and spun away, and the lean meat remains. At this point in the process, a food safety intervention is applied to destroy any pathogenic bacteria that may be present. This intervention is classified as a processing aid. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers processing aids to be substances that are present in a meat or poultry product in an insignificant amount that do not and have no functional or technical effects in the finished meat or poultry product. Examples of processing aids used during the production of LFTB include citric acid and ammonia. The resulting beef product is about 95 percent lean protein but also has a finer texture than typical ground beef. For these reasons, LFTB is not sold as a stand-alone product. Instead, LFTB is added to raw ground beef typically at a ratio of 5–15 percent.

What Is LFTB?

At a basic level, LFTB is no different from any other meat removed from a beef animal. It’s beef. But conversations with reporters and consumers made clear that consumers perceive that all meat is removed from car-casses by a few cuts from a knife. Of course, the reality is, meat comes from muscle and muscle can be connected to bone and fat. Depending on the location of the muscle, removing it can present varying degrees of challenge.

Why LFTB Is Beneficial

There are several benefits to using LFTB in ground beef. Consumers demand a lean beef product, and LFTB allows processors to make lean ground beef blends that are affordable. Using ammonium hydroxide or citric acid to destroy bacteria provides added safety. USDA data show that the incidence of E. coli in fresh ground beef has been declining significantly over the past decade. The number of USDA ground beef samples testing positive for E. coli O157:H7 dropped 55 percent between 2000 and 2010. LFTB products have been a part of that success story.