Oozing burgerPhoto: Forty PhotographsHamburgers
Perhaps the risk of mad-cow disease, E. coli 0157, and antibiotic-resistant salmonella have already put you off burgers for life. If not, the news that 70 percent of U.S. ground beef contains a horror-movie mixture called “pink slime” should do the trick. WTF, you ask? Turns out a company called Beef Products has been buying pathogen-rich slaughterhouse scraps, dosing them with ammonia, and selling the resulting pink, slimy product as a “safer” burger-filler to industrial-beef purveyors — a horror-show Hamburger Helper. As the Times reported, the stuff doesn’t even work, possibly adding to the level of nasty bugs in burger meat. Well done, Big Beef!