Stop school slime
Alice Jay - Avaaz.org
Dear friends across the US,
Your school district could be serving dangerous cow waste called "pink slime" in kids' lunches. The USDA has passed the decision to local districts after growing public outcry -- but only local pressure can stop this in your district. Click here to launch your own easy local petition to stop school slime:
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"Pink slime" is leftover cow scraps, diced up, boiled down, and soaked in ammonia. It's dangerous, it's disgusting, and even fast food chains have stopped adding it to their ground beef. But your local school district could put it into kids' lunches. Right here, right now you can stop them by starting your own easy, local petition.
The USDA was about to put these scraps of skin into lunchrooms all over the country, but a huge outcry from parents made them pause. Instead of banning the slime, they simply passed the buck and handed the decision to local school boards.
Let's bring this pressure to school districts across the country! If each of us starts a petition with this simple online tool, we can stop every local school board from serving pink slime to kids -- even a small petition can have a big effect locally, click here to start a petition to stop pink slime now:
http://avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition_l/?vl
There are 13,000 school districts in the United States, and that's too many for the small Avaaz staff to tackle. But there are hundreds of thousands of Avaaz members across the country, and if each of us takes action now to affect our own school boards, together we can protect kids in towns all across America.
It's super simple to launch your local petition. First, each of us answers three easy questions. Then, we send emails and Facebook posts to our friends inviting them to sign up -- some petitions will even be sent to Avaaz members nearby. Soon we will see our friends and neighbors joining our petition, and when the numbers are significant the petition can be delivered to our school board.
The meat industry calls this stuff "lean finely textured beef", but actually it's made of the outside trim of cow carcasses, connective tissues, cartilage, and leftovers from other cuts of meat. They heat it up to melt out most of the fat, then compress it and douse it with ammonia and water to kill pathogens like E. coli and salmonella. But microbiologists have warned the USDA that the resulting glop is "high risk" to still contain dangerous bacteria. When the pink slime has been tested in the past, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times.
Using these cow scraps is a bit cheaper than real meat -- about $0.03 per pound. But it's not safe for humans, and especially kids. It used to be only for pet food, and that's where it belongs. Our neighbors and our local school boards might not know all the facts, but we can start a petition and spread the word:
http://avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition_l/?vl
Our communities depend on all of us to make them better places to live. If we take the first step by starting a petition, your friends and other Avaaz members will follow, and together we can make school lunches -- and the kids who eat them -- healthier and safer.
With hope,
Alice, Matt, David, Andrew, Emily and the whole Avaaz team
SOURCES
'Pink slime' eliminated from fast food, but not school lunches (USA Today):
Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned (New York Times):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all
Some Schools Planning to Drop 'Pink Slime' Meat (AP)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/schools-planning-drop-pink-slime-meat-15931108