A trio of governors and a duo of lieutenant governors last week dined on pink slime burgers and pronounced them mouth-wateringly-delicious-and-nutritious as TV cameras rolled on their barbecue in a Nebraska factory that manufactures the stuff.
Shoppers have reacted somewhat differently to pink slime secreted into their hamburger, so much so that three national supermarket chains stopped using it, and an Iowa grocer now offers both slimed and unslimed burger.
The politicians insisted that identifying slimed beef is not necessary, or even wise, because the fabricated-sans-fat-smashed-meat-scraps-seasoned-with-ammonia mixture is more nutritious. It's so great that announcing its presence on the burger label is unnecessary, the politicians insisted.
The governors and lieutenant governors chose to champion not consumers but slime producers. The reason is obvious. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who organized the slime plant tour and barbecue, got $150,000 in campaign contributions in 2010 from the factory's founders. Rather than rally to the public, too many politicians prostitute themselves to corporations. Thus, American workers have a government that incongruously rewards corporations that ship jobs overseas. Somewhere the government of the people, by the people, for the people got lost.
Just as in the case of pink slime, the interests of flesh-and-blood people and corporations frequently conflict. In those instances, a government of the people, by the people, for the people should take their side. But a government run by politicians constantly hounding corporate campaign contributions often fails to favor flesh-and-blood people.
Professor, researcher, writer and mathematician Ralph Gomory discussed this problem last week at the Second Annual Conference on the Renaissance of American Manufacturing, held in Washington, D.C. Many speakers before him recommended recharging manufacturing with fixes like tax breaks, improved technical education and cheaper energy. These, Gomory argued, are no more than tinkering around the edges.
Real solutions exist, he said. There is, for example, billionaire Warren Buffett's proposal to eliminate the nation's massive trade deficit and promote domestic manufacturing with certificates that would limit imports to the level of exports.
"Why are these not even seriously discussed?" Gomory asked, then answered:"That is because the we is not clear. Who is the we of the United States?"
"The present system is working well for global corporations, but not for the mass of Americans. When you come to the legislative system, it does not act for a single we. They are affected by global corporations that have tremendous political impact. We may not be taking the actions we could take because it is not clear who the we is."
The result for the United States is factory losses, unemployment and trade deficits. Gomory, who is co-author of the book Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, pointed out:
"With unbalanced trade, we are consuming more than we produce and that cannot go on without us being poor and in debt to everyone else."
Not all factories off-shore production or produce slime, however. And some of their owners are as bitter about a government that fails to protect them as workers are. Roger Berkley, former chairman of the National Textile Association, spoke at the manufacturing conference with Gomory.
Berkley, who was the fourth generation in his family to run its textile business, sounds exactly like a worker whose job was outsourced. They share values and commitment to country, community and family. Berkley said, for example, that when he ran the family business, Weave Corp., he operated on the belief:
"Your company is only doing as well as its lowest-paid employee. And when that employee is making minimum wage you are not doing well at all."
"When Dick Nixon stepped off that plane in China, we could feel the noose around our necks tighten."
"What will soldiers wear when the Chinese get pissed off at you? You will have a bunch of naked soldiers running around the field."
Thus Berkley's bitterness is understandable. As is that of unemployed workers who saw their government reward corporations for sending their jobs overseas. As is that of consumers who watch politicians put on a pink slime show rather than defend the right to know whether burger contains ammonia-infused scraps.
Those pink slime politicians don't need a barbecued scrap-burger. They need a lesson in American history. It's we the people. Not we the multi-national corporations.
Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger
Meryl Ain, Ed.D.: March Madness: School Lunch, Pink Slime and National Nutrition Month
Michael Greger, M.D.: Pink Slime: All About the Green
But the difference is that I would only expose myself to those levels of ammonia if I HAD NO OTHER CHOICE. The difference here is that the manufacturers of pink slime and other food producers (and apparently politicians) are telling us that we have no choice, they will determine what we eat and we'll damn well like it. That is the situation and I condemn that. I will determine what I want to eat and don't want to eat, not anyone else. But unless it's labeled so I can make a reasonable decision, how do I choose? The phrase 'trust me' used be only a used car salesman line. It should NOT be used by people who basically grow and produce our food!
One other poster got the real message. The governors did the photo op as much in sympathy for packing plant workers that are being laid off because of this tempest in a teapot as for any other reason.
Don't like meat buffered with fillers? Go to Whole Paycheck and joint the rest of the gullible yuppie-puppies paying 30% or more extra markup for "organic".
Agribusiness has destroyed they family farm; land development has destroyed some of the most fertile soil on the planet; Montsanto has infested our food supply with its patented and GMO seeds; CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) have spread across the land, polluting land, air and water with wastes. Agribusiness sickens chilldren with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) and other chemicals. Animals suffer unspeakable tortures in meat production.
Through all of this and other predations of the meat industry, flesh eaters have been silent and complicit with the evil. Anyone who buys the corpses of animals at the grocery store, calls it meat and consumes it is contributing to enormous enormous suffering on the part of animals, is contributing to the destruction of hte biosphere and the planet and the pollution of hte land, air and water. Flesh eaters have been consuming all manner of industrial chemicals, antibiotics and other crap fed to livestock for decades.
Why should people who are wiling to eat the rotting decaying flesh of murdered animals, which is what meat is, why should a little bit of pink slime bother them? They are already eating crap, literally, because feces contaminate meat.
People who choose to be obvlious to what is done to animals and the earth, who have allowed our food system to become a toxic cesspool, deserve pink slime.
They never do because there is none. It's just FUD and enviro-scare-mongering.
Prescient.
And I agree if they want it so badly label it and don't give another fancy name.