SFUSD, like most other Districts in the country, is working hard on the user end to ensure that our kids are not sickened by tainted meat. This is too much responsibility for school districts to bear. The NSLP cannot continue to be a dumping ground for the meat industry’s dregs. With reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act upon us, there needs to public pressure to improve standards nationwide. And most importantly, increased budgets for higher quality meat when it is served.

My colleague Charles Margulis at the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland recently posted this piece on the Generation Green blog. If you are as compelled – and grossed out – by his excellent summation of all that is wrong with beef these days, read the rest here:

Hamburger Helper? Slime, Ammonia and Cow Shit

In our ongoing series “There’s WHAT in My Food?”, we submit for your reading pleasure (though probably not while you’re eating) our comments on a stunning New York Times investigation that exposed how an ammonia-treated beef filler used in 50% of the nation’s ground beef (possibly up to 80%, according to one industry source) has repeatedly been found contaminated with deadly e. coli and salmonella, despite claims that the ammonia-bathed product would actually eliminate the harmful bacteria.

Meat maker Beef Products Inc (BPI) created a product the beef industry loves. Prior to BPI’s innovation, the slimiest, nastiest slaughterhouse scraps were used primarily for pet food (while the fatty bits were rendered for various oil-based food and non-food products). But in the late 1990’s, BPI began experimenting with ways to take these dirty, feces-stained scraps and turn them into, well, dirty, feces-contaminated burger filler…

http://generationgreen.org/?p=661