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talkpoliticsOne frequently espoused tenant of the free market is that bad actors eventually get found out and punished by the marketplace. Consumers, when faced with unsafe, unethical or low quality product, will migrate to other products that are safer, more ethical and higher quality so long as free market competition gives them those options. There is certainly a lot to be said about this, and the history of consumer economics is full of examples of companies and products that lag behind their competition in innovation and value similarly lagging behind in sales.
From that perspective, there may be many who are hailing last month's decision by Beef Products, Inc. to suspend plant operations that made "pink slime," the highly processed beef product used as filler in many ground beef products. The decision came after an ABC news story highlighted the process by which beef trimmings are cut from the bone, have the fat processed out of them and then are treated with a diluted ammonia solution to kill bacteria...and set off a consumer outcry over the undisclosed presence of a product that many find revolting. In rapid succession, a number of purchasers of huge volumes of ground beef pledged to purge the pink slime from their products while others scrambled to declare they have never used the stuff. While Beef Products, Inc. is considering its options for how to rebrand their product, which they call lean, finely textured beef, for now, the consumer uproar has managed to yank a huge volume of their product from the marketplace.
Probably not. Governors from three states toured a Beef Products, Inc. plant in late March to try to counter the public reaction and touted t-shirts with the slogan "Dude, It's Beef!" (a slogan that I suspect will be as successful as Toyota's attempt to boost Yaris sales with the IT'S A CAR! campaign). While I bet late night got a few good chuckles out of Texas Governor Rick Perry speaking far more eloquently in favor of pink slime than he ever managed of his own Presidential campaign, I think there are important points here being overlooked by both consumers and food activists who have managed to turn the marketplace against the product.
Consumer revulsion is going to increase food prices. The process of making pink slime may turn a few stomachs, but removing it from the food supply system is the equivalent of losing 1.5 million heads of cattle annually. U.S. cattle supply is already tight, so there is no way that loss of this process, which recovers up to 15 pounds of edible meat per animal, for any length of time will NOT drive up prices. And that won't be restricted to just ground beef as more whole cuts will have to be processed placing a pinch on other beef products. Even if you always bought ground beef processed fresh from a butcher counter you know, the presence of pink slime in other mass produced, packaged, ground beef kept your product's price lower.
There's no good evidence that pink slime is dangerous to consume, at least not any more than any other beef product. The ammonium solution used on pink slime is widely used in the food processing industry and in places you would not necessarily suspect. Pink slime is not actually a recent addition to our food supply. It was introduced in the 1970s to help bring down beef costs when consumers reacted negatively to then rising prices. According to the Maureen Ogle piece, it has always been difficult for beef producers to break even on whole cuts, so raising margins on the heavily processed products helped keep down costs across the industry. The sterilization process used by Beef Products was introduced in the 1990s to decrease the risk of e coli contamination and has been, by and large, effective.
As I mentioned above the spoiler cut, market advocates point to how consumers, armed with knowledge and needs, will drive the market to better results. When it comes to our food, however, that knowledge is often difficult to obtain. America produces vast quantities of food, but we do so on an industrial scale where very few of our population have direct knowledge of how that food is made. We are a nation of over 300 million eaters, but very few actual farmers and even in industries like cattle processing, very few of the workers witness the actual killing. Animal carcasses are processed on a vast scale in most cases, and it is unlikely that many people when presented with exacting details of how much of their food is made could stomach actively thinking about it while eating. Producers do not disclose a lot about how they make their food to the general public because making this much food this cheaply is necessarily going to involve processes that, while certified as safe for consumers, are simply unpleasant up close and personal.
Even consumers who think they are avoiding that by gravitating towards labels like "organic" may simply be fooling themselves. An outfit like Horizon Organic milk may feed its cattle an organic diet, but nobody in this country produces milk in volumes like that with all of the cows living the happy life of child story books.
So the pink slime story may be an ironic case of consumers gaining knowledge that causes them to move the market against objective measures of their interests in terms of food safety and cost. I'll be honest: I don't care to eat pink slime although since I was born in 1969, I almost certainly have. The idea of food being treated with even a certified safe ammonia solution is simply unappetizing in the extreme. There is an intuitive level where it is easy to believe that any food product that is processed to that degree must have nutritional deficits, but intuition is often wrong. Finally, look at the stuff:
Looks like something a guinea pig designed by the Hello, Kitty corporation would shit out.
So here I am -- all for consumers demanding more information about the products they buy, and especially about the products they EAT, but I am also wondering how that knowledge should be both presented and used by consumers. Because if we all suddenly demand that our food be locally produced and minimally processed out of a visceral revulsion to mass production of food, I know one thing is certain: many more people won't be able to afford to eat.
From that perspective, there may be many who are hailing last month's decision by Beef Products, Inc. to suspend plant operations that made "pink slime," the highly processed beef product used as filler in many ground beef products. The decision came after an ABC news story highlighted the process by which beef trimmings are cut from the bone, have the fat processed out of them and then are treated with a diluted ammonia solution to kill bacteria...and set off a consumer outcry over the undisclosed presence of a product that many find revolting. In rapid succession, a number of purchasers of huge volumes of ground beef pledged to purge the pink slime from their products while others scrambled to declare they have never used the stuff. While Beef Products, Inc. is considering its options for how to rebrand their product, which they call lean, finely textured beef, for now, the consumer uproar has managed to yank a huge volume of their product from the marketplace.
Probably not. Governors from three states toured a Beef Products, Inc. plant in late March to try to counter the public reaction and touted t-shirts with the slogan "Dude, It's Beef!" (a slogan that I suspect will be as successful as Toyota's attempt to boost Yaris sales with the IT'S A CAR! campaign). While I bet late night got a few good chuckles out of Texas Governor Rick Perry speaking far more eloquently in favor of pink slime than he ever managed of his own Presidential campaign, I think there are important points here being overlooked by both consumers and food activists who have managed to turn the marketplace against the product.
Consumer revulsion is going to increase food prices. The process of making pink slime may turn a few stomachs, but removing it from the food supply system is the equivalent of losing 1.5 million heads of cattle annually. U.S. cattle supply is already tight, so there is no way that loss of this process, which recovers up to 15 pounds of edible meat per animal, for any length of time will NOT drive up prices. And that won't be restricted to just ground beef as more whole cuts will have to be processed placing a pinch on other beef products. Even if you always bought ground beef processed fresh from a butcher counter you know, the presence of pink slime in other mass produced, packaged, ground beef kept your product's price lower.
There's no good evidence that pink slime is dangerous to consume, at least not any more than any other beef product. The ammonium solution used on pink slime is widely used in the food processing industry and in places you would not necessarily suspect. Pink slime is not actually a recent addition to our food supply. It was introduced in the 1970s to help bring down beef costs when consumers reacted negatively to then rising prices. According to the Maureen Ogle piece, it has always been difficult for beef producers to break even on whole cuts, so raising margins on the heavily processed products helped keep down costs across the industry. The sterilization process used by Beef Products was introduced in the 1990s to decrease the risk of e coli contamination and has been, by and large, effective.
As I mentioned above the spoiler cut, market advocates point to how consumers, armed with knowledge and needs, will drive the market to better results. When it comes to our food, however, that knowledge is often difficult to obtain. America produces vast quantities of food, but we do so on an industrial scale where very few of our population have direct knowledge of how that food is made. We are a nation of over 300 million eaters, but very few actual farmers and even in industries like cattle processing, very few of the workers witness the actual killing. Animal carcasses are processed on a vast scale in most cases, and it is unlikely that many people when presented with exacting details of how much of their food is made could stomach actively thinking about it while eating. Producers do not disclose a lot about how they make their food to the general public because making this much food this cheaply is necessarily going to involve processes that, while certified as safe for consumers, are simply unpleasant up close and personal.
Even consumers who think they are avoiding that by gravitating towards labels like "organic" may simply be fooling themselves. An outfit like Horizon Organic milk may feed its cattle an organic diet, but nobody in this country produces milk in volumes like that with all of the cows living the happy life of child story books.
So the pink slime story may be an ironic case of consumers gaining knowledge that causes them to move the market against objective measures of their interests in terms of food safety and cost. I'll be honest: I don't care to eat pink slime although since I was born in 1969, I almost certainly have. The idea of food being treated with even a certified safe ammonia solution is simply unappetizing in the extreme. There is an intuitive level where it is easy to believe that any food product that is processed to that degree must have nutritional deficits, but intuition is often wrong. Finally, look at the stuff:
Looks like something a guinea pig designed by the Hello, Kitty corporation would shit out.
So here I am -- all for consumers demanding more information about the products they buy, and especially about the products they EAT, but I am also wondering how that knowledge should be both presented and used by consumers. Because if we all suddenly demand that our food be locally produced and minimally processed out of a visceral revulsion to mass production of food, I know one thing is certain: many more people won't be able to afford to eat.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 15:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:36 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 17:05 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 15:23 (UTC)As for food sanitation, how about the use of atomic waste?:
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 15:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 15:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 21:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/12 14:54 (UTC)Beef Wellington
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 20:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/12 14:50 (UTC)If it isn't "pink slime" it sounds pretty close...
(no subject)
Date: 21/4/12 01:23 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 21:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/12 14:52 (UTC)And if you eat Pop Rocks and drink Coke you die.
Tru Fax
... or not.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 16:38 (UTC)I have to wonder if there would have been the same outcry if it had some fancy French name, like calling it la bave rose makes it sound delicious doesn't it?
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 17:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 19:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 20:25 (UTC)When I was in high school biology ( I'm fearful to say what decade), our instructor was great and would go on rampages about all the myths, and one she talked about was shampoo and finger nail polish and the only real way to improve them was to eat gelatin because it was from horse hooves and cow bones (usually). It made my stomach turn when I heard that.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/12 21:36 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/12 01:02 (UTC)Quite the opposite in imperfect competition.
(no subject)
Date: 21/4/12 14:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/12 20:09 (UTC)