Is There Meat Glue In Your Food? The FDA Claims Meat Glue Is Safe, but Scientists Say "bacteria on a steak that’s been put together with meat glue is hundreds of times higher" Than A Natural Steak.
Posted by freedomforall 2 years, 6 months ago to Government
Excerpt:
"Fakery aside, meat glue could be contributing to the growing epidemic of food poisoning that hits millions (the CDC puts the number at 1 in 6 Americans or around 48 million every year).
That’s because pathogens, like Escherichia coli, Listeria, and Salmonella (with many strains now antibiotic resistant) mostly appear on the surface of meat. When the outer surface is seared, even if the meat is eaten medium rare or rare, that bacteria have most likely been killed.
When multiple pieces of meat are combined, however, those pathogens could be lurking in the center. Surfaces of the meat that once were on the outside are now in the middle. If you haven’t cooked that meat thoroughly inside and out, you could be in for big trouble.
On an Australian TV exposé of meat glue several years ago, an expert in microbiology commented that “the amount of bacteria on a steak that’s been put together with meat glue is hundreds of times higher” than your average piece of unglued meat. The same is true for chicken and fish.
Now, if you ask the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture], and certainly Ajinomoto, you’re going to hear that meat glue is perfectly safe. Sure, there’s that little problem of bacterial contamination, but these US consumer protection agencies appear to be quite confident that restaurants know that glued meat needs to be cooked thoroughly.
The USDA calls it TG enzyme, and gives instructions for cooking stuck-together meat that sounds exactly the same as what it would tell you about cooking all types of raw meat. As far as the FDA is concerned, there’s really no problem with Ajinomoto making its own determination that transglutaminase is generally recognized as safe, or GRAS.
Back in the late 1990s, the USDA received several petitions from both Ajinomoto and another company called AMPC about expanding the use of TG enzyme and attempting to get the consumer labeling (in the supermarket) to be as innocuous as possible.
Both companies got just about everything they wanted. Meat glue can now be used in meat products across the board—both the kind the USDA calls “standardized” and “non-standardized.” (This refers to what’s called a “standard of identity”—a legal description of what it takes for certain foods to be able to use a name such as hot dogs, milk, cheese, bread, etc. For example, if you want to sell something called “Salisbury steak,” it must contain at least 65 percent meat, among other requirements.)
In the case of meat glue, the agency had to change the standard of identity for numerous items like breakfast sausages, frankfurters, and bologna in order to allow for the use of the enzyme. Additionally, it was also approved to be used as a “binder” (something added to food to thicken or improve texture) for “certain meat and poultry products.”
As a result, it’s quite possible that manufacturers are putting it to uses way beyond faking expensive cuts of meat."
------------------------------------------------------
This is another example of the brilliant actions of the FDA to poison the People they are supposed to protect.
Read the labels on prepared food especially.
Learn to cook and be careful of ingredients in the foods you buy.
"Fakery aside, meat glue could be contributing to the growing epidemic of food poisoning that hits millions (the CDC puts the number at 1 in 6 Americans or around 48 million every year).
That’s because pathogens, like Escherichia coli, Listeria, and Salmonella (with many strains now antibiotic resistant) mostly appear on the surface of meat. When the outer surface is seared, even if the meat is eaten medium rare or rare, that bacteria have most likely been killed.
When multiple pieces of meat are combined, however, those pathogens could be lurking in the center. Surfaces of the meat that once were on the outside are now in the middle. If you haven’t cooked that meat thoroughly inside and out, you could be in for big trouble.
On an Australian TV exposé of meat glue several years ago, an expert in microbiology commented that “the amount of bacteria on a steak that’s been put together with meat glue is hundreds of times higher” than your average piece of unglued meat. The same is true for chicken and fish.
Now, if you ask the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture], and certainly Ajinomoto, you’re going to hear that meat glue is perfectly safe. Sure, there’s that little problem of bacterial contamination, but these US consumer protection agencies appear to be quite confident that restaurants know that glued meat needs to be cooked thoroughly.
The USDA calls it TG enzyme, and gives instructions for cooking stuck-together meat that sounds exactly the same as what it would tell you about cooking all types of raw meat. As far as the FDA is concerned, there’s really no problem with Ajinomoto making its own determination that transglutaminase is generally recognized as safe, or GRAS.
Back in the late 1990s, the USDA received several petitions from both Ajinomoto and another company called AMPC about expanding the use of TG enzyme and attempting to get the consumer labeling (in the supermarket) to be as innocuous as possible.
Both companies got just about everything they wanted. Meat glue can now be used in meat products across the board—both the kind the USDA calls “standardized” and “non-standardized.” (This refers to what’s called a “standard of identity”—a legal description of what it takes for certain foods to be able to use a name such as hot dogs, milk, cheese, bread, etc. For example, if you want to sell something called “Salisbury steak,” it must contain at least 65 percent meat, among other requirements.)
In the case of meat glue, the agency had to change the standard of identity for numerous items like breakfast sausages, frankfurters, and bologna in order to allow for the use of the enzyme. Additionally, it was also approved to be used as a “binder” (something added to food to thicken or improve texture) for “certain meat and poultry products.”
As a result, it’s quite possible that manufacturers are putting it to uses way beyond faking expensive cuts of meat."
------------------------------------------------------
This is another example of the brilliant actions of the FDA to poison the People they are supposed to protect.
Read the labels on prepared food especially.
Learn to cook and be careful of ingredients in the foods you buy.
