Is pink slime a food safety scandal or a triumph of industrial efficiency?

Nature · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Known formally as lean finely textured beef, this controversial additive sparked a national firestorm in 2012. While critics decried it as an unappetizing byproduct of industrial processing, industry leaders defended it as a safe, protein-rich way to reduce waste and lower costs. The debate remains a landmark case in food labeling.

Lean finely textured beef (LFTB) is produced by heating beef trimmings to remove fat via centrifuge, then flash-freezing the remaining lean meat. To ensure safety, processors like Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) treat the material with gaseous ammonia, which forms ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria. This process, approved by the USDA in 1990, allows manufacturers to reclaim muscle meat that would otherwise be discarded. By 2012, approximately 70% of ground beef sold in U.S. supermarkets contained this additive.

The term 'pink slime' emerged as a pejorative in a 2009 New York Times piece, but gained national notoriety following a 2012 ABC News series. Public outcry was swift; school districts and major retailers dropped the product, and BPI faced a massive decline in production, closing three of its four plants. Critics, including USDA microbiologists, argued the product was not nutritionally equivalent to traditional ground beef and should be labeled as an additive rather than meat. Conversely, proponents like Iowa Governor Terry Branstad warned that removing LFTB would increase food costs and obesity rates.

The controversy culminated in a high-stakes legal battle. BPI sued ABC News for defamation, claiming the network’s coverage was a coordinated disinformation campaign. In 2017, the case settled for at least $177 million—the largest amount ever paid in a U.S. media defamation case at that time. Despite the backlash, the USDA reclassified LFTB as 'ground beef' in 2018. Today, the product remains a flashpoint for debates over transparency, industrial food standards, and the definition of meat itself.

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