pink slime

Meaning

Noun

• An undesirable pink-colored microbial mass occurring in the slurry used in making paper.
• A meat byproduct produced from scraps by heating and then treating with ammonia to produce a food additive.

Related

Similar words

• lean finely textured beef (LFTB), boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT)

Origin

• Apparently first applied to food in 2002 by Food Safety and Inspection Service microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein.
• {{cite-journal
• |date=2009-12-30
• |title=Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned
• |first=Michael
• |last=Moss
• |newspaper=The New York Times
• |issn=0362-4331
• |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html
• |passage=Another department microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”