The Ethics of Slime

By now you’ve probably seen some of the news stories regarding the use of “pink slime” (or Lean Finely-Textured Beef, as the meat packing industry calls it) on your local news, and depending on your thoughts about processed foods, food safety and purity, public relations, marketing, strategic planning, government food inspectors, international relations, or vegetarianism, may have be appalled by this story on any number of levels. We could probably write an entire textbook on Institutional Failure using this one case as an example, but in all of the shouting and finger-pointing, at least three different ethical points seem to have been overlooked. And that’s not even counting the issue of whether this stuff is safe to eat…

First off, LFTB is safe to eat according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture; it can’t be sold directly to consumers, but it can be used as filler in ground beef products, and some recent report claim that as much as 70% of all ground beef sold in the U.S. contains some of it. The substance does not meet government standards for human consumption in Canada or the U.K., mainly because the process of making it includes the use of ammonia gas to kill any bacteria that might be contained in the raw materials. But it is worth noting that the product has been in use in the United States since 2001, and there hasn’t been a single case of any illness or injury reported in connection with it, while there have been multiple cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or “Mad-Cow Disease” in the U.K. and Canada during that period. It’s enough to make you wonder why there is suddenly a consumer panic about this product…

Part of the issue is undoubtedly the nickname “pink slime” itself, and it probably doesn’t help that the term was coined by a scientist at the USDA in the first place. But the nickname was invented in 2002, and the consumer outcry didn’t appear until ABC News ran a series about it in 2012. We could legitimately argue about the ethics of that decision; on the one hand, processed, modified and genetically altered food products are genuinely controversial; but on the other hand, calling national attention to a snarky comment made a decade ago about an (apparently) perfectly safe food product smacks of yellow journalism. That is, it seems more like the product of a slow news day than any clear or present danger…

Second, we have the issue of damage to the companies involved, their employees and other stakeholders, and to the economy in general. No one is going to suggest that consumer safety should be less important than the survival of the companies that make LFTB, but there is no evidence that a consumer threat even exists – and there have already been plant closures and layoffs due to the panic these “news” stories have set off. If it eventually turns out that LFTB really is as safe as its proponents imply, then ABC and the other news outlets that have been trumpeting the story will have bankrupted several companies (and their stockholders), destroyed hundreds of jobs (and the communities that depending on those salaries), and wasted millions of pounds of food products just to sell more advertising time on their broadcasts…

Which brings us to a third point: the offending meat product is made from scraps and mechanically separated animal tissues – exactly the same things they make hot dogs, sausages, some brands of chicken nuggets and SPAM out of. While the recovery of meat that would otherwise go to waste may not be anything we’d want to think about at dinner time, it’s difficult to argue that it would be better to just throw out millions of tons of usable food in a world filled with starving people. If there was any evidence that LFTB was actually unsafe then all of the current uproar would be completely justified – and if anyone wants to conduct their own experiments to test such a hypothesis they are welcome to go right ahead; if they can find any such evidence then they will have a real blockbuster news story to talk about. But absent any such evidence, there is actually more muckraking going on in the news stories than there is in the meatpacking plants…

It can’t really be denied that LFTB is revolting in appearance and disturbing in origin, or that there are real concerns about the long-term effects of foods processed in this manner. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine how anybody benefits from the current fracas other than ABC News and its affiliates. So I have to ask: do we have an ethical responsibility to avoid sensationalist reporting that has questionable value but an almost certain chance of causing harm to workers, communities and stockholders? Or is there an ethical responsibility to call the consumer’s attention to products that may, some day, be considered a potential health risk? Or do we just invoke the First Amendment, allow people to make their own choices, and let the chips fall where they may?

It’s worth thinking about…