Which One's Pink?

In the same country where foodstuff advertisers are able to talk people into buying artificially flavored and colored "fruit" cereals for their children but not into buying muesli for themselves (or their kids), it shouldn't surprise anyone that the U.S. Department of Agriculture would try to get away with something like this. Even as the President's wife is trying to get children to eat healthier food, his Agriculture Secretary (that would be Tom Vilsack, the would-be 2008 presidential candidate whose name got ridicule from Jon Stewart and inattention from everyone else) is planning to purchase seven million pounds of slaughterhouse beef scraps and cutting waste treated with ammonia hydroxide - unofficially called "pink slime" - for school lunches.

The food industry has been in the business of feeding pink slime to unsuspecting American consumers for years. Several fast-food restaurants had been using this meat by-product in its hamburgers, but when noted celebrity chef and noted intelligent foreigner Jamie Oliver demonstrated how this "meat" is processed, Taco Bell, McDonald's, and Burger King all agreed to stop selling food made of pink slime. Why the USDA would allow this stuff to be used in school lunches, especially in the wake of its own suggested menu changes to the school lunch program that would increase the use of whole grains, fruit, and vegetables - these would be the first such changes since 1997 - is baffling.

Because the woman who pushes healthier eating is surnamed Obama, and because the chef who brought pink slime to people's attention is a Brit, it's easy to understand why right-wingers think that being against junk food is like being against America. Harder to understand is why anyone of any political persuasion would allow children to eat this gunk. Can we at least agree that children shouldn't eat as their midday meal a sandwich made out of processed meat normally used in pet food? If Rush Limbaugh doesn't want the government telling him what he should or shouldn't eat, fine. But why should that same government force a substance best described as the Velveeta of beef on our kids?

Mmm, pink slime - you want fries with that?

It's ironic that this "pink slime" is used in pet food, when it isn't even fit for a dog.