The controversy over mechanically separated meat does not subside. What the American media called "Slimegate", referring to the "pink slime" scandal, ends up in a courtroom: Beef Products Inc., the leading American producer of mechanically separated and hydroxide-treated beef. Ammonium, based in South Dakota, is suing ABC News asking for economic damages.
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The controversy on the mechanically separated meat. What the American media called "Slimegate", Referring to the" pink slime "scandal, it ends up in a courtroom: Beef Products Inc., the leading American producer of mechanically separated beef and treated with ammonium hydroxide, based in South Dakota, has sued ABC News asking for economic damages.
The use of the term "pink slime" would have brought about a severe damage to the image, worth at least 1,2 billion dollars, a lot of the money requested as compensation under a state law that offers farms the opportunity to sue a person when he criticizes their products. After becoming a political issue, with the Republican governors of Kansas, Texas and Iowa in defense of the BPI and the Democratic deputies, led by Chellie Pingree, on the other side, the "Slimegate" arrives at the South Dakota court.
Here it will be decided whether or not the television broadcaster had the right to call this product, born from the splendid idea of the BPI, to solve the problem of the vulnerability of meat scraps bacterial contamination, to immerse them in ammonia in order to kill Escherichia coli and salmonella, with the so derogatory name of "pink slime", approved regularly by the USDA and marketed legally.
Dan Webb, a lawyer representing the BPI, explains how ABC has vilified the products of your customer simply by calling the additive "pink slime". But why does BPI really blame ABC? Webber says the broadcaster "made consumers believe that any beef product, actually made from 100% beef, was what it called" pink slime, "an unhealthy and repulsive liquid substance that isn't even meat. ". It matters little, however, that it was not ABC, but the microbiologist of the Food Safety Inspection Service Gerald Zirnstein, to invent the term, as he tells in a Fox News article.
Roberta Ragni
Read also Pink Slime: the scandal of the "pink slime" that is undermining the consumption of meat in the USA
