'Pink slime' is also used in cheese, reveals meat industry under fire for using caustic cleaning chemical
- Caustic cleaning chemical is also used to turn milk to cheese
- Similar chemicals used in chocolate and baked products
- Kraft admits chemical is used in some of its foods
By Rob Waugh
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The controversy over ammonia-treated beef - or what critics dub ‘pink slime’ - broadened this week as it was revealed that the caustic cleaning chemical is also used in cheese.
Related compounds are also used in baked goods and chocolate.
Ammonia, known for its noxious odor, became a hot topic with the uproar over what the meat industry calls ‘finely textured beef’ and what a former U.S. government scientist first called ‘pink slime’.
Backlash: Meat industry experts have struck back after the 'pink slime' controversy by pointing out that the chemical is also used in cheese
The caustic cleaning chemical is also used widely in cheese and similar chemicals are used in baking products
WHAT IS AMMONIA - AND WHY IS IT IN OUR FOOD?
Ammonia is a nitrogen compound with a distinctive pungent smell of urine. It's used widely as a cleaning agent - although it's highly caustic in its pure form.
'Pink slime' beef is made from fatty trimmings sprayed with ammonium hydroxide - ammonia mixed with water - to remove pathogens such as salmonella and E.coli.
Ammonia compounds are used as leavening agents in baked goods and as an acidity controller in cheese and sometimes chocolate.
Kraft Foods, whose brands include Chips Ahoy cookies and Velveeta cheese, is one company that uses very small amounts of ammonium compounds in some of its products. It declined to specify which products.
‘Sometimes ingredient names sound more complicated than they are,’ said Kraft spokeswoman Angela Wiggins.Wiggins said that in turning milk to cheese, a tiny amount of ammonium hydroxide is added to a starter dairy culture to reduce the culture's acidity and encourage cheese cultures to grow.
The meat industry has been trying to raise awareness of other foods that contain ammonia, in response to what it has characterized as an unfair attack on a safe and healthy product.
For example, ammonia compounds are used as leavening agents in baked goods and as an acidity controller in cheese and sometimes chocolate.
‘Ammonia's not an unusual product to find added to food,’ Gary Acuff, director of Texas A&M University's Center for Food Safety, told a recent press conference hosted by Beef Products Inc. ‘We use ammonia in all kinds of foods in the food industry.’
After critics highlighted the product on social media websites and showed unappetizing photos on television, calling it ‘pink slime,’ the nation's leading fast-food chains and supermarkets spurned the product, even though U.S. public health officials deem it safe to eat.
Hundreds of U.S. school districts also demanded it be removed from school lunch programs.
One producer, Beef Products Inc, has since idled three factories. Another, AFA Foods, filed for bankruptcy protection.
Ammonia - often associated with cleaning products - was cleared by U.S. health officials nearly 40 years ago and is used in making many foods, including cheese. Related compounds have a role in baked goods and chocolate products.
Using small amounts of ammonia to make food is not unusual to those expert in high-tech food production. Now that little known world is coming under increasing pressure from concerned consumers who want to know more about what they are eating.
‘I think we're seeing a sea change today in consumers' concerns about the presence of ingredients in foods, and this is just one example,’ said Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety.
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