About a month ago, McDonald’s and other fast food companies vowed to stop using “pink slime” in their meat products. “Pink slime” is a chemical concoction that mixes ammonia and water with leftover scraps of meat that are generally unfit for human consumption. This mixture is supposed to eliminate the bacteria and disease that lives in these scraps but still be safe to eat… Watch the video above to get a feel for how this process takes place.

Like the video points out, there is no law requiring a label that states that the meat has been treated with ammonia, because the USDA considers it a “process”, not an ingredient. Because of this, for many of us, this process has understandably gone unnoticed.

However, when you send your children off to school everyday, you expect them to have healthy, safe food options in the cafeteria. Many kids and parents depend on the government lunch program, because it is affordable and is believed to be “healthy”. But apparently, it is affordable because they are filling their real ground beef with up to 15% of the pink slime!

It is disturbing that the government believes that not only is this a safe and ethical practice, but that they have the right not to make it publicly known what is in the food we are eating.

Hopefully, school cafeterias and the government follow the fast food companies in eliminating the pink slime from their meat products. Saving a couple pennies off of the bill for ground beef is not worth making our children, or anyone, sick!