Bibliographic record
Abstract
The public perception of lean finely textured beef (LFTB) as resulted in Beef Products Inc. (BPI, based in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota) closing its three processing plants in Texas, Kansas and Iowa as of May 25, 2012. LFTB consisted of meat particles that remained after the fat had been mechanically spun out of cuttings. BPI blamed the closures on what it perceived as a smear campaign. Executives stated that the future employment of the 700 people laid off depended on the company's recovery from what it perceived as a PR problem, not a genuine food safety concern. BPI's initial response was to solicit expert opinion from the meat processing industry asserting that LFTB was safe and nutritious, which it posted to its website, and also to stimulate political protest and action. BPI reportedly lost 80 percent of its business within 28 days after ABC broadcasted its pink slime series. BPI sued ABC News, Inc. and others for defamation (Schulte & Eaton, 2012). What could the company do to reassure customers? Processing and LFTB Processed foods often included many unusual items that weren't appetizing (Ecoist, 2012; Izismile, 28 July 2011). One such processed food product was LFTB. It had been added to 70% of America's ground beef until the 2011-2012 media furor. USDA microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein referred to LFTB as in a 2002 e-mail message (Moss, 2009). The negative perspective was subsequently popularized by Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution TV program aired April 12, 2011. He described as composed of leftover cow parts or trimmings that had to be treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill dangerous microbes such as e.coli and salmonella. ABC News gave the story national coverage in 2012. The commercial view of LFTB was that it optimized meat production by making effective and efficient use of beef trimmings (Cargill, June 29, 2013). In 1994 BPI developed its pH Enhancement System to reduce pathogens such as E.coli O157:H7. In 2001 the US and Drugs Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the pH Enhancement System. This gave BPI the go ahead to produce pH enhanced lean beef. In 2007 the International Association for Protection awarded the company the Black Pearl Award, its highest honor, in recognition of BPI's commitment to food safety. Its web site listed other awards as well. Cargill, a large agribusiness, explained that LFTB or what it called finely textured beef was useful because it permitted companies to vary the fat content in hamburger to the specific level desired by consumers; as a staple food for many families, the price of ground beef had to remain low to keep it accessible; and finally, companies saved 26 pounds of beef from every animal. Is the LFTB Process Safe? Ammonium hydroxide, an antimicrobial agent, had been in use in the meat industry for over 40 years and in 1974 an FDA committee concluded that it was safe for use in meat processing. It did not need to be listed as an ingredient since it was used in processing, not as an additive (Entis, 2012). Cargill used citric acid instead of ammonium hydroxide. However, Moss (2009) listed numerous instances where BPI's LFTB products were found unsafe due to pathogenic contamination. However, the World Health Organization and the and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations approved the process (Kislenko, March 24, 2012). Mechanically separated meat, used in the process of making LFTB, had been banned in Europe (Adams, March 28, 2012). Adding ammonia was not permitted in Canada. Change.org Petition Consumers have become increasingly concerned about food safety (Scott-Thomas, May 3, 2011) and within nine days of posting the petition, drafted and proposed by Bettina Siegel on March 6, 2012, over 200,000 people had signed, with the number growing to 258,874. The petition urged the USDA to allow school districts to opt out of using LFTB, which the USDA agreed to as of fall 2012. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".