Sunday, March 11, 2012

Beef. It’s not what’s for lunch anymore. We’re In The Pink!

It’s 11:45 AM; Do you know what your child is eating? If you said “yes” you’re probably wrong.

school-lunchSpaghetti with “meat” sauce, beans, orange: this looks like something Lady M would approve of, as long as that’s skim milk

Boy, timing is everything, isn’t it?

PRESS RELEASE (IFT):

March 6, 2012

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced that nearly 6,000 USDA partners are teaming to deem March 8, as “What’s on My Plate?” day to heighten public awareness of the importance of choosing nutritious foods for a healthy meal…

The goal of “What’s on My Plate?” day is to create a nationwide buzz about food choices on March 8 as part of national Nutrition Month activities…

Congratulations! Mission Accomplished! There’s certainly been a lot of nationwide buzz about  “What’s on My Plate” this past week. And a lot of public awareness surrounding the importance of choosing nutritious foods, especially for school lunch programs, has surely been heightened. Especially after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it's buying 7 million more pounds of what’s come to be known as  "pink slime" for school lunch programs across the country.

1286168065-processed_chickenNo, not dessert. This USDA approved pink slime is destined for chicken patties, hot dogs and hamburgers at a school lunch near you.

Before I continue with this disturbing Pink Slime expose (warning: the following is not suitable reading for school aged children or backyard chickens) I want to make it perfectly clear that Lady M knew nothing about this slime job. Just like Eric Holder, her little people let her down and kept her in the dark.

Based on my investigative reporting, so far I’ve determined that this icky mess started with an innocent request from Plouffe-Daddy, who was just trying to curry favor with our community organizer contingency so we can count on their votes again in the 2012 WTF campaign. You see, Medea Benjamin (founder of Code Pink) recently launched a new enterprise and we just wanted to give her new venture a little boost.

CODE-SOYLENT PINK copy

Some might call that crony capitalism, P-Daddy just called it “putting America back in the Pink.”

Obama-Pink-Poster-61754h/t Freaking News

Anyway, Medea assured Chef Sammy – Lady M’s go-to guy for all things nutrition related - that her wonderful pink product was 100% locally sourced USDA approved organic food-stuff (which I guess technically it is, as Ammonia (NH3) is covered in organic chemistry class).

CAUTION2-CODE PINK copy

Additionally, I understand that Soylent Pink Products Inc.(SPPI) is a non-profit company and that Medea has pledged all proceeds (after unaudited expenses) from her new enterprise to her other tax-exempt fund, “Prosecute Bush and Cheney for War Crimes.” So it’s a good cause.

Any-hoo, with all the budget cutting going on around here, combined with the incredible increases in food prices (NOT included in Big Guy’s official inflation index, for obvious reasons: we don’t want to panic the public) Lady M and Chef Sam “Sammy” Kass have been looking for ways to make our No Child’s Fat Behind MiPlato school lunches less expensive without having to cut any SEIU workers, pay or benefits. So this fine Pink product looked like just the ticket. And in hindsight, it wasn’t Sammy’s fault for assuming that this new miracle product was made from organic soy beans.

tofurky keilbasaAfter all, what can’t you make with organic soy beans?

And since Lady M never gets involved in any of the day-to-day decisions involved in her initiatives anyway, you can see how this happened. Just like with Ricky in the Gun Walker incident, she’s just a victim of life’s circumstances. So, just to make it crystal clear, allow me reiterate:

Lady M knew nothing about this pink slime-in-SEIU-school-lunches scandal before some nosey blabbermouth leaked it to the vast right wing conspiracy blogosphere. Nor will it in any way interfere with her continued commitment to the healthy eating to ensure No Child’s Fat Behind. This includes, butt is not limited to, continued support of all SEIU efforts to prepare, deliver and serve food in every school cafeteria in America.

delivering lunch copySEIU local 74 team delivering lunch to PS 379

Furthermore, the people originally behind approving this dangerous perfectly safe, albeit disgusting food “additive” will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And, as usual, we discover that this is actually Bush’s fault. Although in this case it’s Bush I not Bush II who gets the blame:

Zernstein tells The Daily that "scientists in D.C. were pressured to approve this stuff with minimal safety approval" under President George H.W. Bush's administration. The USDA asserts that its ground beef purchases "meet the highest standard for food safety."

Butt I get ahead of myself: This whole scandal broke with the block buster airing of Jamie Oliver’s documentary which included a graphic depiction of how pink beef slime is “created” from  left over “bits” and “parts” after the butchering: intestines, connective tissue, and other unmentionable “beef trimmings.”

Warning: not suitable viewing for small children, those whose immune system is compromised or backyard chickens.

Pink chicken slime is made essentially the same way, only with leftover chicken parts instead: beaks, eyes, bones and wattles. I know, I know: it sounds dangerous with all that intestinal E. coli floating around. Not to worry, that’s why your government has mandated the use of ammonium hydroxide (Ammonia (NH3)) in the process – it kills everything. It also turns all the resulting goop – up till now a rather disgusting tan color, a rather pleasant pinkish tone. Throw in a little extra artificial red food dye and you’ve got yourself some fine neon pink slime that blends well with just about everything.

Butt now that even McDonald’s has announced it will no longer be using pink slime, we’re probably going to have to step away from the slime pit too. Although there’s no way we’re going to be able to do it quietly after Michael Savage broke the story on his show last Friday. It’s bad enough that he’s blabbing about pink slime to his ginormous nation wide audience, butt now he’s penned another in his string of best selling books attacking everything that Big Guy is trying to do to for America:

SAVAGE BOOKPre-Order Trickle Down Tyranny Here…If You Dare!

So anyway, now we’re really in a pickle. We can’t get any more of your money for our SEIU lunch program out of the Do-Nothing Congress; Big Guy can’t afford to let any SEIU members – or their pay or benefits - get cut, and Lady M’s still 100% committed to No Child’s Fat Behind. So it was back to the drawing board for Sammy. Now that the original slime is off the table, he’s been busting his chops to come up with a new way to make school lunches cheaper (as well as tasty).

He’s been experimenting with replacement products and developed gobs of new recipes. Recently he and Lady M took the new recipes on the road and conducted focus group tests on both the recipes and new names for our meat food product. Butt that route was getting us nowhere. We couldn’t even get most people to try the new product.

mo sammy tasting copy Here – taste this, and tell me what you think it is.

That’s when Big Guy stepped in and suggested, “Why don’t you just rename Medea’s mechanically separated meat something else? That way, people will stop confusing “MSM” with our media lapdogs, and everyone will think they’re eating something different.” BINGO! A twofer! That’s why he’s President!

It’s a simple, elegant solution and Big Guy has demonstrated over and over how well this tactic works: “Kinetic Military Action” not a war, EPA regulations, not Cap and Trade, a “documentary” not an infomercial, a “Jobs Bill” not Stimulus II – well you get the idea. Pure genius!

So that’s exactly what we did.

mo tasting 2 copy“Hurry up and take the damned picture – I’m not getting this crap any closer to my mouth.”

Sammy tasked our Department of Government Acronyms and Obfuscation with coming up with a brand new name and they didn’t let us down: from now on our processed meat food by-product will be known officially as “Bio-molecularly Amalgamated Reconstituted Food (BARF). Since it sounds sophisticated – sort of like the trendy “gastro-pub” and “molecular food” I figure we can use this new “food” term generically to describe all sorts of things in addition to the the new-butt-still-pink slime we’ll be using in school lunches. Even some of Lady M’s veggie dishes.

MO-Sammy-prepare pink copyLady M and Chef Sam  whipping up a test batch of veggie B.A.R.F

Pinkaron_failYum! Pink macaroons - no wait! Those are burgers.

Of course, since it’s still essentially the same old, uh… slime, our new BARF will require the same special handling procedures as the original Slime:

unloading copySEIU members unloading a fresh batch of Soylent Pink ® Slime at a local school.

sp drum copy100% safe when stored in a specially shielded pantry and used or frozen by the “use by” date.

wasteWe’re not kidding

Any way, our focus group gave a thumbs up for our latest formula so I think once again Big Guy has saved the day. We’re now free to slime America again.

bo soylent ice copyUmmm, umm, umm: that’s good slime

One final word on product safety from the USDA: they advise you take precautions when using BARF so as not to confuse E. Coli - a bacteria commonly found in meat - with “e. e. coli, a bacteria commonly found in erratically punctuated poetry” h/t Alexandra Petri –as in “petri dish” (I don’t make this stuff up) at WaPo).

seeker of truth  by e e cummings:

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

                                       

wimpy copy I’ll gladly pay you tomorrow for a slime job today

Linked By: BigFurHat of iOwnTheWorld, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!