Have Campaign Contributions Persuaded Branstad, Republicans to Back 'Pink Slime?'
Recent campaign donations unearthed by the Des Moines Register show that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad has received more than $150,000 in campaign contributions from a "pink slime" producer.
You’ve told us how you feel about "pink slime."
That's the controversial beef product made from scraps of leftover meat and treated with ammonia. It's the one that's been pulled from shelves faster than Tickle Me Elmo.
"I am furious that for years I did not know what I was feeding my children, not to mention myself," said a Patch commenter. "This is one of the worst food stories I have heard ever."
You may know that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad has been in the news lately defending the product, calling the media coverage a "smear campaign." He has called for a federal probe into the matter.
“It’s time to end the smear campaign and to stop the use of inaccurate, inappropriate and charged words that are designed to scare people,” Branstad said in a news conference after taking a tour recently of a Beef Products Inc. plant, which manufactures “pink slime,” according to Radio Iowa.
But, according to a recent story from the Des Moines Register, in 2010, Branstad was gifted $152,000 in campaign money from Eldon and Regina Roth, owners of Beef Products. The company has donated nearly $800,000 over 10 years to Republicans vying for various state and federal elected offices, compared to $28,000 to Democrats, according to the Register report. Republican governors from multiple states have joined in defending the beef product. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, who received no donations from Beef Products, has also defended the beef product.
There are two (or more) sides to every story. Some comments on our aforementioned article defended the product, like user “Proud UNI Grad.”
"It is beef. It is chopped and processed like no other, but it is beef" he wrote. "That's like getting all riled up about the smoothy maker using pre-mushed up bananas in the smoothy."
Given that, what do you think? Is Branstad beholden to the company that donated $152,000 to him, or is he just reminding us that we shouldn’t freak out over some mushed up beef?
Alison Gowans
3:22 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Beyond the campaign contributions economics, there's also the local economics issue to consider. Over 200 jobs in Waterloo are on the line.
Larry Bell
4:31 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
The media needs to get off this whole thing. It is nothing. What the media needed was a random act of journalism. There is no problem--there never was a problem--the sensationalism and terminology drove the thing and it was unwarranted.
Erv Server
4:52 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Branstad keeps this issue alive in the media more than anyone else. Everyday he's on the news flailing his arms and yelling about Hollywood and activists and how he will get even with them. The "pink slime" industry needs to tell Branstad to shut up already if they have any hope of recovering.
Todd Richissin
7:54 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Larry: To Erv's point, what's the media to do when Branstad is talking about it all the time?
Parlay1
8:24 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
it's an amped up "non" issue, with a dirty name now.
Francis Thicke
9:09 pm on Tuesday, April 3, 2012
I would have to be naive to believe that there isn't a political element to Branstad's posturing on pink slime. However, is "pink slime" safe? Probably about as safe as other meats -- after it is treated with ammonium hydroxide. Is pink slime slimy? I have never seen it unmixed with ground beef, but I would expect that if ground "meat" is subjected to alkaline hydrolysis at a pH of 11 in order to dissolve the cell walls of pathogenic micro-organisms to kill them, it would would also begin to dissolve the meat and make it ... slimy.
Greg Tagtow
7:53 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
I love this issue. A shining example of how the media can make an issue out of nothing. Do you think that anyone in the media would have cared about this if a worker hadn't refered to it as "pink slime"? The story writes itself. The industry has been reclaiming meat this way for around 20 years without an issue, safety or otherwise. Now all of the people that are un in arms about this, have no problem munching on a hot dog, and we all know what they contain.
Francis Thicke
10:09 am on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
You make a good point, Greg, that hot dogs and some other processed meats contain things that most people would rather not know about. There is a saying that "the making of laws, like the making of sausages, is not a pretty sight." On the other hand, the industry would also rather that we not know what goes into these processed meats. The industry euphemism "lean finely textured beef" is about as deceptive as the term "pink slime."
David Leonard
9:00 pm on Wednesday, April 4, 2012
It's hard to believe that Gov. Branstad would be pursuing this so vigorously if his campaign had not receive $152,000 from the owners of Beef Products Inc. However, I have no problem eating hamburger containing LFTB.
Sam Osborne
6:08 pm on Friday, April 6, 2012
One might wonder why fresh meat does not need to be ammoniated. And dog fesses should be ammoniated and served to little kids at school to create jobs of scooping all of that stuff up, packaging it and promoting how patriotic is to eat it. As you might know from seeing those clumps of grass in the spring, there’s a lot of food value coming out of Rover. If some little and crumby kid says that he or she is not eating that s***, they ought to have their mouth washed out!