Safeway Pulls Pink Slime

Pink slime is out at Safeway

Call it lean finely textured ground beef, call it pink slime, call it "all meat is murder," call it "eating one part of the animal, why not another." Safeway is calling it no mas.

The Bay Area-based retailer, the country's second-biggest supermarket chain, is pulling ground beef made with the controversial meat product, the Contra Costa Times reported.

So-called pink slime is making the media rounds after a group of parents of schoolchildren began an online media campaign designed to get the meat product out of school lunches.

Video of the "lean finely textured ground beef,"  which is made from fat trimmings heated to separate tiny pieces of lean meat from the fat and then added back to the ground beef, has made the rounds on the Internet, and isn't exactly appetizing to watch.

Fearful of the customer backlash, Safeway followed the lead of other supermarket chains in pulling ground beef made with the pink slime from its stores.

Chances are customers had consumed such ground beef for years with no ill effects, but the move has been made.

Local resident Sandra Fiorenza stopped buying hamburger after the pink slime meme exploded, the newspaper reported.

"It sounded gross," she told a reporter while shopping at a Walnut Creek Safeway. "It made you want to become a vegetarian once again."

Again?

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