Our Beef Doesn't Have Glass Cleaner in it, But Lots of Beef Does

You read it right, glass cleaner. This has been all over the media lately. Last Sunday's edition of the New York Times had a great article on this topic. ABC news did a piece on this as well. The documentary Food Inc. also goes in depth with this process. So today I am reposting Mike Adams version from NaturalNews.com's of chemical-ized ground beef. I very well could have reposted the New York Times but I really admire Mike Adams and his website and I'm hoping that you will use his resources as well.

So back to the beef. Did you know that upwards of 80% of ground beef in America contains ammonia? The big beef processors have figured out that ammonia will kill a fair amount of E. coli 157. So after many field trials ammonia has been approved for beef processing. And chances are most people have and consumed ammonia in their hamburgers, chili, meatloaf etc... And of course, ammonia will never be listed as one of the ingredients in your ground beef.

However, at Aroma Thyme Bistro we can guarantee there is no glass cleaner in our beef. That's because we use the best sources for our meat. Every piece of meat that we buy comes from small independent farms and small processing plants that meet our demanding criteria. When Jamie and I lived in Colorado we had the experience of learning the ins-and-outs of beef production. Production from the birthing to the packing. Colorado is known for its immense beef processing facilities and it is also known for the small hands on independent plants. So I was able to educate myself with the good and the bad. And trust me the bad beef has no place at Aroma Thyme Bistro. The bottom line is that these big producers are cutting major corners. And when you make drastic compromises you need a back-up plan. So the big boys know their meat has ecoli in it. The obvious solution for them is to kill the fecal matter instead of removing it or never having it to begin with. So you are still getting the fecal matter with your glass cleaner, it is just dead.

Here's the full version of the story from NaturalNews.com.

(NaturalNews) If you're in the beef business, what do you do with all the extra cow parts and trimmings that have traditionally been sold off for use in pet food? You scrape them together into a pink mass, inject them with a chemical to kill the e.coli, and sell them to fast food restaurants to make into hamburgers.

That's what's been happening all across the USA with beef sold to McDonald's, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants, according to a New York Times article. The beef is injected with ammonia, a chemical commonly used in glass cleaning and window cleaning products.

This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef "safe" enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn't seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.

This ammonia-injected beef comes from a company called Beef Products, Inc. As NYT reports, the federal school lunch program used a whopping 5.5 million pounds of ammonia-injected beef trimmings from this company in 2008. This company reportedly developed the idea of using ammonia to sterilize beef before selling it for human consumption.

Aside from the fact that there's ammonia in the hamburger meat, there's another problem with this company's products: The ammonia doesn't always kill the pathogens. Both e.coli and salmonella have been found contaminating the cow-derived products sold by this company.

This came as a shock to the USDA, which had actually exempted the company's products from pathogen testing and product recalls. Why was it exempted? Because the ammonia injection process was deemed so effective that the meat products were thought to be safe beyond any question.


What else is in there?

As the NYT reports, "The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles. Federal officials agreed to the company's request that the ammonia be classified as a 'processing agent' and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels."

Fascinating. So you can inject a beef product with a chemical found in glass cleaning products and simply call it a "processing agent" -- with the full permission and approval of the USDA, no less! Does anyone doubt any longer how deeply embedded the USDA is with the beef industry?

Apparently, this practice of injecting fast food beef with ammonia has been a well-kept secret for years. I never knew this was going on, and this news appears to be new information to virtually everyone. The real shocker is that "a majority" of fast food restaurants use this ammonia-injected cow-derived product in their hamburger meat. It sort of makes you wonder: What else is in there that we don't know about?

"School lunch officials and other customers complained about the taste and smell of the beef," says the NYT. No wonder. It's been pumped full of chemicals.

There are already a thousand reasons not to eat fast food. Make this reason number 1,001. Ammonia. It's not supposed to be there.

You can get the same effect by opening a can of dog food made with beef byproducts, spraying it with ammonia, and swallowing it. That is essentially what you're eating when you order a fast food burger.

It's almost enough to make you want to puke. If you do so, please aim it at your windows, because ammonia cuts through grease like nothing else, leaving your windows squeaky clean!

Sources for this story include:
NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=2