Judge Blocks Iowa State's Release of 'Pink Slime' Food Safety Data

Iowa State University cannot release food safety documents regarding the process of making lean finely textured beef, a District Court Judge Dale Ruigh has ruled, according to an AP story.

Ruigh said releasing the information would cause “irreparable harm” to Beef Products because the information is proprietary. Allowing the information to be made public might also harm Iowa State laboratories because companies would go elsewhere for testing to avoid records becoming public, according to a report in the Press Citizen. 

The Dakota Dunes company hired Iowa State Professor James Dickson in 2002 as a food safety consultant.

In April Dickson explained to University students how LFTB or 'pink slime' --- as critics called it --- was produced. He said that after cattle has been trimmed of cuts such as steak and roasts, the trim is heated to just below a live cow's body temperature and the rest of the meat is spun from the fat. BPI started a process about 10 years ago in which that spun meat was injected with a gas form of ammonia, killing bacteria such as e. coli. It's then frozen and cut into cubes to be added to ground beef before consumers purchase it at the grocery store.

Dickson said the frozen LFTB cubes, the product itself, contain 400 parts of ammonia per million and the ground beef it's mixed with that consumers find at the store normally has 200 parts of ammonia per million. The ph level is about 8.5.