Meet Your Meat

In my one year as a vegetarian, I viewed many a documentary graphically detailing the horrors of American slaughterhouses.  I will readily admit to shedding a tear or two at the poignancy of wide-eyed calves being cruelly separated from their bound-for-slaughter mothers, or dozens of chickens crammed into cages so tiny, that they were rendered incapable of any kind of motion.  My altruism was handily thrown to the curb, however, when I experienced (and gave into) the onslaught of random cravings for steak.  My verve for animal rights has, so far, not recovered enough to influence my dietary choices, but, I still feel the old twinges of outrage when I read news regarding some predictably disgusting, cost-cutting tactic on the part of the meat industry and its consumers. 

The most recent rekindling of my righteous, vegetarian indignation occurred when I read Charles Kuffner’s May 21^st, 2011 blog addition to Off the Kuff, titled “Pink Slime.”  In his post, Kuffner condemns the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s purchase of meat consisting mainly of connective tissue, fatty scraps, and bone (although packaged as “ground beef”) for lunches served in school cafeterias across the nation.  He supports his argument that this scrap meat, or “pink slime,” is not fit for children by reporting that meat of such a low caliber is traditionally utilized in dog food, and banned, for human consumption, in Great Britain.  Kuffner also mentions that, while meat lobbyists contend that “pink slime” is just plain-old “nutritious” beef, even fast food chains that are notorious for use of questionable meat products are phasing it out.  Kuffner appears to be aiming for a fairly general audience, as many individuals (regardless of politics) can be easily repelled by the notion of feeding anyone (much less children) pulverized meat scraps.  But, what’s the ultimate health and well-being of the nation’s youngsters to a savings of three cents/per pound of random, mystery meat?