USDA Buys "Pink Slime" for School Lunches

School is bad enough, what with all the bullying, homework and mean teachers. But now it is about to get much, much worse -- the so-called "pink slime" will soon be part of school lunches.

The Daily reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to buy seven million pounds of Lean Beef Trimmings (Beef Product Inc. prefers that name to pink slime) of the stuff for the school lunch program. In a statement the USDA said it "meet(s) the highest standard for food safety.”

That may be true, but do you want your kids eating it? The Daily explains the creation process:

Made by grinding together connective tissue and beef scraps normally destined for dog food and rendering, BPI’s Lean Beef Trimmings are then treated with ammonia hydroxide, a process that kills pathogens such as salmonella and E. coli.

The resulting pinkish substance is later blended into traditional ground beef and hamburger patties.

Sounds appetizing.

“We originally called it soylent pink,” Carl Custer, a retired microbiologist from the Food Safety Inspection Service told The Daily. “We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent (to ground beef). My main objection was that it was not meat.”

Fast-food leaders McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell recently stopped using the pink slime because of increased negative publicity about it, in part due to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.