“Pink Slime Video” Town Branch p. 256 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCqKl4Q3hW4 ANA KASPARIAN: A few years ago, we did that story about how McDonald’s uses this pink slime to make its hamburger meat and its chicken nuggets, right? And basically what it is, it’s, is basically meat that has been ground up very finely, and then they use something known as, um, ammonium hydroxide in order to kill all the bacteria in the meat. Now this is not like great cuts of meat, right? It’s basically like the odds and ends of the animal that are left over, and like I said -  CENK UYGUR: Mutilated ANA KASPARIAN: Yea, obviously (laughs). And then they have to use this ammonium hydroxide because of the fact that it has a ton of bacteria in it, and they use this nasty slush to make all of their products right? So, um, there’s this chef by the name of Jamie Oliver who decided to really give McDonald’s a hard time about this, and as a result, McDonald’s USA has just announced that they will stop using ammonium hydroxide in their beef. CENK UYGUR: Wow, you’ve got to give Jamie Oliver a lot of credit. At first I was thinking that maybe he was doing it to get some attention, and like “Ah, is that kind of a cheesy PR move” and stuff, but look, he got the job done. On the other hand, now your meat will have bacteria in it.  ANA KASPARIAN: No, well -- CENK UYGUR: (laughs) I hope they’ve found another way. ANA KASPARIAN: I hope they found another way as well. Who knows what that way is? But what I found really fascinating about this story, and everyone already knows this right? You go to Canada or you go to another country, and they have standards there. They have regulations put in place so fast food copanies can’t use cleaning products in order to sanitize the beef. Right? So, what - what’s amazing to me is that, uh, a spokesperson from McDonald’s in Canada released a statement saying, “Oh, we’ve never used this disgusting product in our meat, like we’ve always only used 100% beef, salt, pepper, and that’s it!” You know, and I remember having a burger when I was in Europe once and thinking, and it was a McDonald’s burger, and thinking “Wow, this tastes really good. McDonald’s is awesome.”  CENK UYGUR: (laughs) ANA KASPARIAN: And it turns out that yea, it was not the same thing. It’s so different. In the US, we have no standards. We’ll eat anything. CENK UYGUR: Well, when I was in Taiwan, all the restaurants had signs on them saying, “Don’t worry. No US beef allowed.” OK? Because our reputation abroad is “those guys will do anything for a buck.” So, god knows what’s in their beef? The goo that they use, it’s pink, and the reason it’s pink is because they shave some of it off of the bones, and the blood mixes in.  ANA KASPARIAN: Yea. CENK UYGUR: That’s why they gotta use that bacteria-killing chemical, to get all the blood, et cetera, out of the goo. That’s why you have 99 cent value menus because if you’re going to produce it for that cheap, you gotta find a way to do it. So it’s not like they can’t do it with the bacteria-killing things, it just will cost you a little more, right? ANA KASPARIAN: Right.  CENK UYGUR: Wow, let’s go to $1.09, I think it’s gonna be OK.