Food Safety Outbreak: Ground Trimmings
The fatty trimmings from slaughterhouses were once used exclusively in pet food and cooking oil, since they were prone to contamination from E. Coli and salmonella. Then an entrepreneur at a company called Beef Products, Inc. had the idea of injecting ground trimmings with ammonia to kill the bacteria.
The USDA was impressed with the results. In 2001 it began buying BPI’s ammoniated beef for use in school lunches, while exempting the company from routine testing requirements. It was so confident in the ammonia’s ability to control germs that it excluded BPI meat from recalls, even when the meat was an ingredient in burgers involved with pathogen outbreaks. The BPI beef, which when mixed with other meat, brought down the cost of burger by about 3 cents per pound, was also popular with fast food chains and grocery stores.
Since ammonia was classified as a processing agent, not an ingredient, it did not have to be identified on labels. Problems developed, however, when customers complained of a strong ammonia smell.
School lunch officials banned BPI meat from a Kansas facility in its hamburgers in 2009 after some lots tested positive for E. Coli, but the overall waiver on testing was maintained by USDA. The USDA changed its exemption on testing only after the New York Times presented it with evidence that BPI meat did repeatedly test positive for salmonella—48 times between 2005 and 2009—as well as E. Coli.
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Sources
Moss, M. 2009. Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned. New York Times, December 30.
Bottemiller, H. 2010. FSIS to Test Ammoniated Beef for E. Coli. Food Safety News, January 19.
Waddinton, L. 2010. Beef processor wants Iowa State to keep ammonia research documents hush-hush. The Iowa Independent, February 2.
