Sharing Details

After the media mayhem over Lean Finely Textured Beef, most of the nation’s school districts are ordering ground beef which does not contain LFTB for the next school year. State agencies provided the USDA with their initial ground beef orders in mid May; reflecting more than twenty million pounds of ground beef products without LFTB having been ordered, as opposed to roughly one million pounds of beef products which may contain LFTB ordered. While the USDA is still accepting beef orders for the next school year, these first orders show a disturbing trend. While schools, restaurants, and grocers have the right to choose what forms of ground beef they offer, one can’t help wondering if they’re now making choices based on biased and inaccurate information. A friend who is a cattle rancher stated that “the cattle industry should have been sharing the details of beef production and processing, which results in a safe, wholesome, and lean product, with the consumer far better than they had been”. He’s probably right, perhaps then this whole fiasco could have been avoided, or at the very least nipped in the bud early on.