Pink Slime Controversy Costs 200 Amarillo Locals Their Jobs

The pink slime controversy hit and went viral.  People started to realize that the hamburger meat they were eating wasn't just meat.  It was a mixture of meat and other things.  Once discovered the outcry to remove pink slime from their food was tremendous.  So tremendous that Beef Products, Inc.  decided to suspend the operation of making pink slime and because one of the factories that makes the stuff is in Amarillo, 200 people lost their jobs yesterday.

So what exactly is pink slime?  Well according to How It Works:

"Ten years ago, the rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called 'trimmings' that were sold primarily as pet food. No more. Now, Beef Products Inc. of South Dakota transforms trimmings into something they call 'boneless lean beef.' In huge factories, the company liquefies the trimmings and uses a spinning centrifuge to separate the sinews and fats from the meat, leaving a mash that has been described as 'pink slime,' which is then frozen into small squares and sold as a low-cost additive to hamburger."

So BPI created this product as a low cost additive and created 600 jobs across the country.   Yesterday, 200 of those people right here in Amarillo, were given their own pink slime, a pink slip.

According to ProNews 7:

"Due to repeated, inaccurate and frequently malicious news reports about our company and our product, our business has been severely impacted," Craig Letch, Director of Food and Safety and Quality Assurance for BPI said in a statement Monday. "As a result, we have no choice but to suspend operations at three plants, including the one that we opened here in Amarillo in 1981."

My heart breaks for those men and women who had to go home yesterday to their families and say I lost my job.

Luckily, those employees weren't just shown the door, they each received 60 days pay with benefits.

Don't get me wrong I know I've eaten the stuff but I kind of wish I didn't know that I did.  However it is what it is, and now because people don't want to eat the stuff anymore BPI has decided to stop the manufacturing of the additive.

The plant hopes to reopen that division in the future.

For more information on beef and pink slime visit Beefisbeef.com