School Lunches | featured news

Goodbye candy bars and sports drinks. Hello baked chips and diet sodas....

Lawyers for ABC News asked a judge Wednesday to toss out a $1 billion defamation lawsuit filed by a South Dakota-based meat processor over a meat product that critics dub "pink slime," saying the news organization did not knowingly disparage the company or its product....

Beef Products Inc. sued ABC News, Inc. for defamation Thursday over its coverage of a meat product that critics dub "pink slime," claiming the network damaged the company by misleading consumers into believing it is unhealthy and unsafe....

“Pink slime,” or “lean, finely textured beef” filler treated with ammonia to kill bacteria, has been making the headlines recently in response to the U.S. Department of Agriculture decision to make 7 million pounds of ground beef containing “pink slime” available to school districts for use in school meals.

The controversy over the ground beef filler dubbed "pink slime" has hurt U.S. ground beef demand, a Tyson Foods executive said Tuesday. Heightened awareness and debate over the product, which the industry calls lean finely textured beef, has "put a fair amount of pressure on ground beef consumption," Tyson Chief Operating Officer Jim Lochner said during a presentation at an investor conference hosted by Morgan Stanley.

The company that makes "pink slime" is suspending operations at three of four plants where the low-cost beef filler is made amid a public outcry over concern about the ingredient.

News of the ammonia-treated additive, formally called lean finely textured beef, set off a reaction by schools and an announcement by the Agriculture Department.

All this angst over "pink slime" has made one thing clear: We don't always know what we're getting when we bite into a big juicy burger....

"Pink slime" just went from a simmer to a boil. In less than a week earlier this month, the stomach-turning epithet for ammonia-treated ground beef filler suddenly became a potent rallying cry by activists fighting to ban the product from supermarket shelves and school lunch trays.

The L.A. school board's decision to stop serving flavored milks on campuses is just the beginning.