Thursday

30


November , 2017
Chicken to pink slime
13:51 pm

Maneka Sanjay Gandhi


Is the chicken you get in commercial large scale food vendors, in products like sandwiches, chicken? Perhaps not.

Subway is a group that targets health conscious folk, who avoid other fast food. Is it healthy? A recent inves-tigation by CBC Marketplace shows that the chicken used in Subway chicken sandwiches is only 42.8% chicken. The salad chicken, which they claim as healthy oven roasted chicken, is only 53.6% chicken! What is the rest: Genetically modified cheap soy protein, known to be problematic for health. About 50 ingredients were found in the tested sandwiches with an average of 16 ingredients in the chicken itself.

The Wildlife Forensic DNA Laboratory at Trent University conducted the tests. So called, “chickenfrom Subways competi-tors contained 85-90% chicken. Marinated, seasoned and processed chickenis also a mix. The four other chains tested included Wendys, McDonalds, A&W, and Tim Hortons.

Food scientists say the food chains selling meat userestructured products”. Industry sources refer to this as pink slime, and pictures of this slime leaked from factory assembly lines are available on the Net from 2010. Restructured products, including the pink slime variety, are essentially smaller pieces of meat or ground meat. The meat is mixed with additives, chemicals, lots of Monosodium Glutamate, which is neurotoxic, and fillers like soy protein to make it last longer and taste better.

According to Fooducate, chicken paste comes from taking every bit of meat off chicken bones by passing them through a high pressure sieve. The taste is so disgusting that artificial neurotoxic flavours, like MSG and manyother additives, are mixed in to make it edible. Then colour is added. Since the slime is full of bacteria it is soaked in ammonia to de-germ it. The slime is then used to make a wide variety of chicken-like products.

Whatis theway chicken is processed? The treatment is now so sophisticated that what seems like a fresh, plump chicken breast (upto 43% injected water) might be only 51 per cent meat! Much of thisplasticchicken goes to curry houses, Chinese restaurants and takeaways, often disguised with highly-spiced sauces and colourings.

Grocers, and supermarkets sell sausages, salamis, luncheonsmeats, nuggets, burgers made of this pink slime and now technology can even shape out chicken breasts and fillets that are only around 60% chicken. What does the rest comprise of? Extenders (corn starch, wheat flour, stale bread for instance), fillers (inlow-cost burgers breadcrumbs, cassava, potato, or rice are used as fillers, often in combination with soya bean protein), water, and soluble binders. Look at the net. This is the kind of Adyouwill see when companies advertise TVP or textured vegetable protein- “Textured Vegetable Protein is the perfect meat substitute in almost any recipe that calls for ground beef or turkey.” No, it is rarely used by vegetariansonly people makingmeatproducts. Normally thrown away carcassparts rich in connective tissue, such as pork skin, tendons are also added and so is gelatine, a transparent goo made of melted skin and bones.

The sausage is another highly extended meat product. These sausages are sold infreshor frozen form and heat treated in restaurants or by the consumer directly at home. One common composition is approx. 60% animaltissue, 15% water, 25% extenders and fillers. In low-cost formulations the major, or entire, part of lean meat derives from mechanically deboned chicken meat, which contains on average 20% fat, which goes straight to your arteries.

When Leicestershire trading standards received a complaintfrom a member of the public about the quality of chicken nuggets, they decided to test 21 samples from 17 differentshops, including the major supermarkets. In one-third
of the samples, the label was misleading about the nuggets meat content. One pack of nuggets contained only 16% meat, 30% less than it claimed. The trading standards officials are unable to identify the brands involved for legal
reasons. Instead, they gave a warning to the worst offender. Subsequent tests recently have shown that the manufacturer has not changed its ways.

Venkys, an Indian brand which sells processed chicken, has actually made available the meat content of its processed chicken products, The chicken franks are only 70% meat, the chicken lollipops 30%, the meat balls 60%, the chicken salami 55%, and the murg masala just 30%.

The thing is, once youve minced bits of chicken to a pulp, that pulp could be anything from anywhere. Recycled pet food, breasts injected with pig and cattle proteins, banned carcinogenic antibiotics - theyve all beenfound by the authorities recently in chicken destined for processing.

The chicken you eat may have bits and pieces of other animals in it, DNA tests specially developed by Sandford, with the public analyst laboratory in Manchester, enabled the English food standards agency to identify traces of pork proteinsin samples of Dutch chicken breasts labelledhalal”. Six
months later, Irish authorities made an even more unsettling discovery in chicken: undeclared bovine proteins. Seventeen samples from Dutch processors contained them. Some manufacturers were using a new technique - injecting so-called hydrolysed proteins. These are proteins extracted at high temperatures, or by chemical hydrolysis, from old animals or parts of animals which are of no use for foodsuch as skin, feathers, hide, bone and ligaments, and rather like cosmetic collagen implants, they make the flesh swell up and retain liquid.

Take the case where McDonalds sold its customerschickenthat was over a year passed expiry. Shanghai HusiFood was guilty of selling chicken as much as one year past their expiry dates to McDonalds and to Yum Brands, which owns KFC and Pizza Hut. An investigative report showed Shanghai Husi workerspicking up food from the floor and throwingit into processing machines anddiscardedMcNuggets were reprocessed until they passed inspection.

This is what happens when the meat industry has decided to make even larger profits at the expense of your health. Meat is bad enough normally, but this is the worst thing you could eat. Is pink slime the best you can do for your children?

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