Foodwatch starts legal action over ‘pink slime’
Food watchdog Foodwatch is taking legal action against the Dutch state. The aim: the origin of so-called ‘pink slime’ must become clear. It isn’t at the moment, so it is impossible to check exactly what it contains and where it comes from. This puts consumers at great risk of eating something they shouldn’t, says Foodwatch. They have launched an online petition.
Not everyone knows what pink slime is, and that’s not surprising. It is a pulp of muscles and tendons, blasted off chicken carcasses with high-pressure water and scraped from pig bones. In other words, leftover meat, which is sold to the food industry as a drab pink mass.
Chicken nuggets and cheap hamburgers can be made with pink slime, for example, as can frikandellen. In itself, it isn’t bad – although it looks pretty disgusting – because if you eat meat, it makes more sense to eat the whole animal rather than just fillets and legs. But Foodwatch has a problem with pink slime: no one knows exactly what it contains or where it comes from. This puts food safety at risk, says the food watchdog.
No one knows
No one can find out which slaughterhouse or animal the pink slime comes from, because its origin is unclear. Sometimes it is chicken, sometimes pork, and sometimes even a mixture of everything: completely unknown. That’s rather unfortunate if you prefer not to eat pork and it nevertheless ends up in your food without you knowing. Moreover, it is also unclear which products this mechanically separated meat is processed into. So you can eat pink slime without knowing it.
Bacteria
The Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority hardly checks for pink slime. According to Foodwatch, it simply does not have the capacity to do so. Even though there is plenty wrong with it. Because the mechanically separated meat is finely minced, bacteria thrive in it. In 2013, a sample survey by the NVWA showed that much mechanically separated meat already contained too many harmful bacteria . So an unclear meat product containing harmful bacteria is entering the food industry, and no one knows exactly where or how. The government is not complying with European regulations on the production, hygiene and labelling of mechanically separated meat.
Enough is enough
This has to stop; it cannot be the case that you don’t know what you are eating. The risk is high, while oversight is minimal. That is why Foodwatch is launching a petition. They want to bring a case against the state to force it to comply with consumer legislation. This is the only way to ensure that the mysterious pink slime is checked and monitored more thoroughly.
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Source: Foodwatch
