The skyrocketing beef prices that promptedChipotle’s latest price hikeare alsodriving up sales of “pink slime.”You may know the stuff by its less-catchy industry name, “finely textured beef,” which is what producers want you to call it, though no one ever will,billion-dollar lawsuitor not. Now, just in time for the price hikes, public schoolshave cut their use of pink slime in lunchesto a new low, buying 94 percent less than they did last year, according to USDA numbers.
The byproduct’s boosters see a golden opportunity in rising costs, like Gizmodo’s Matt Novak, whomakes a cogent argument for why the stuff has been wrongly demonized throughout the years, perhaps gaining its most significant momentum with a particularly effective publicity stunt undertaken byJamie Oliver a few years back. Novak even suggests that an organic version might help the beef byproduct gain more traction. But industry experts don’t foresee a comeback. Analysts says all that processed beef lost the public-image war, and even schools’$2 2014 purchases are essentially unchanged from 2013. Any big “pink slime” revival, organic or not, “is going to be slow and cautious.”
U.S. Schools Cut ‘Pink Slime’ Beef Purchases[Bloomberg]
In Defense of Pink Slime[Gizmodo]
