Pink Slime Maker Goes on the Defensive

Also on hand was Elizabeth Hagen, head of food safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who looked like she really didn’t want to be there. But she too defended the prod­uct for its safety and inclu­sion in the fed­eral school lunch pro­gram. (It was con­cern over school­child­ren eat­ing the prod­uct that set off the ini­tial firestorm in The Daily just weeks ago, lead­ing to a pop­u­lar peti­tion on Change.org directed at USDA.)

How pow­er­ful must the meat indus­try be to cause three state gov­er­nors and a fed­eral offi­cial to rearrange their sched­ules just to par­tic­i­pate in this dog and pony show? Each politi­cian painted BPI as the help­less vic­tim of base­less attacks, as Texas Governor Rick Perry said sadly, “through no fault of their own.” I lost track of how many times “fam­ily busi­ness” was men­tioned. (All this means is the com­pany is not pub­licly held.) But the entire meat lobby has been on the defen­sive and was likely behind the scenes yes­ter­day. As Food Safety News reporter Helena Bottemiller noted in her excel­lent arti­cle describ­ing the event:

The gov­er­nors largely echoed the mes­sage put out by the American Meat Institute just before the event. In a press release, AMI urged the media to stop using the term “pink slime.”

The theme of the mes­sag­ing was that the filler is a safe, nutri­tious prod­uct and the blame for the neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity lies with the media for caus­ing “hys­te­ria.” (See Bettina Siegel’s excel­lent post today ques­tion­ing the safety spin.) Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who was the most emo­tional of the three state lead­ers (you almost got the feel­ing BPI was his com­pany) even tried to rope the first lady’s Let’s Move pro­gram into his plea for san­ity. You see, she wants kids to eat health­ier, and BPI helps make beef leaner.

What? The col­lec­tive clue­less­ness of the speak­ers was stunning.

Blaming the media for expos­ing this ques­tion­able process to the light of day is a text­book cor­po­rate move known as shoot­ing the mes­sen­ger. When you’d rather not answer the hard ques­tions (none were even allowed dur­ing the plant tour pre­ced­ing the press con­fer­ence) just deflect atten­tion by plac­ing blame else­where. Classic misdirect.

And to counter the neg­a­tive imagery of “pink slime,” which is now branded into America’s col­lec­tive con­science, Big Meat has come up with a catchy, down-home, slo­gan: “Dude, it’s beef,” com­plete with t-shirts sport­ing the BPI logo. It’s an insult to our intel­li­gence to insist this cheap filler is iden­ti­cal to ground beef, but that’s the tale that must be spun. The mes­sage is, just shut up and eat your hamburgers.

BPI’s pub­lic rela­tions train, while delayed, has finally left the sta­tion. Yesterday’s plant tour and shoring up of polit­i­cal sup­port is part of a string of broader meat industry’s attempts to reha­bil­i­tate BPI’s maligned rep­u­ta­tion. Step 1, hire PR experts and cri­sis man­age­ment firm. Step 2, call in your polit­i­cal favors. Step 3, give a tour of your squeaky clean plant. Step 4, hold a press con­fer­ence where the theme is jobs and other scare tac­tics. Step 5, blame the media. Stay tuned for more fear mon­ger­ing, blame shift­ing (law­suits?) and calls for restora­tion of calm. The gov­er­nors are even con­tact­ing gro­cery chains to get them to recon­sider sell­ing the prod­uct; I won­der what sort of polit­i­cal deals are being cut there?

The only moment of san­ity came when reporter Jim Avila of ABC News (who has stayed with this story from the beginning—watch his report here) tried to raise the obvi­ous con­flict of inter­est on dis­play. He asked Governor Branstad, did his sup­port for BPI have any­thing to do with the $150,000 he received in cam­paign dona­tions from the com­pany? The gov­er­nor responded vehe­mently, insulted by the very notion that money is a moti­va­tor in politics:

None what­so­ever! Let me tell you this, I will always fight for my con­stituents and I will always fight for what’s right, and I will never be intim­i­dated by any­body in the press who tries to make those accusations.

It was a pretty stu­pid answer as his anger only made the chal­lenge more salient.

The emo­tional tone of the event indi­cates what’s at stake: the fear that as more Americans learn the ugly truth about how their food is pro­duced, other com­pa­nies like BPI might have to defend their inde­fen­si­ble busi­ness prac­tices. Instead of accept­ing respon­si­bil­ity for hid­ing the fact that this filler is added to the meat sup­ply and offer­ing up the trans­parency and choice that peo­ple are demand­ing, industry’s response is to shoot the mes­sen­ger and engage in high-profile dam­age control.

I just have one ques­tion for BPI: were the checks to each politi­cian dis­pensed before or after the event?

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/