Saturday, December 25, 2010

I did not know that...

A Wikiwander that started with Lebanon bologna took me to the article on cold cuts which took me to the article on bologna which took me to the USDA's regulations for hot dogs and bologna, which included the following tidbit:
The definition of "meat" was amended in December 1994 to include any "meat" product that is produced by advanced meat/bone separation machinery. This meat is comparable in appearance, texture, and composition to meat trimmings and similar meat products derived by hand. This machinery separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving, or pressing the meat from the bone without breaking or grinding the bone. Product produced by advanced meat recovery (AMR) machinery can be labeled using terms associated with hand-deboned product (e.g., "pork trimmings" and "ground pork").
Huh. The government changed the definition of "meat".
'To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.' -often attributed to Otto von Bismarck
I wonder when the definition of "law" was amended to include laws that were made by advanced law-making machinery (ALM), consisting of batteries of high-pressure lobbyists and bowing & scraping staffers, rather than traditional laws hand-crafted by statesmen?

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

"hand-crafted by statesmen" is such a quaint term, so ... last century, if even then.

Gmac

Rick O' Shea said...

A well-crafted and unfortunately apt analogy.

And now my mind is scrambling around trying to find a way to incorporate the term "Advanced Meat Recovery" into a conversation.

A very warm, cozy and Merry Christmas to you, Roberta X, Rannie and Huck.

Rick

GuardDuck said...

High quality Christmas snark.

Funny that at about the same time the government also attempted to change the definition of ' is' as well.

SiGraybeard said...

I suppose this explains the bone shards I encountered in some packaged "chicken breast" the other day, and the not-completely-natural texture thereof.

It seems that "meat" would include anything that is gathered with those machines. Tendons, cartilage, connective tissue.

Merry Christmas to you and the cats.

RevGreg said...

I still prefer the term "mechanically separated"...yum!

Drang said...

You need to make a video of the definition with you in a dark suit and sunglasses, reciting it in a monotone, with Bobbi and Shootin' Buddy similarly dressed in the background, occasionally speaking into a walkie-talkie...

Ancient Woodsman said...

The right seasoning and/or libation can make even bad sausage palatable.

The same cannot be said about bad law.

'Sausage' is a noun that describes a particular something before it enters the digestive tract; that which emerges at the end of that canal is sometimes analogous to 'law'.

Merry Christmas to you & Rx & the cats. Thanks for another year of thought-provoking entertainment.

Robert Langham said...

I think our government is currently scraping our bones.

ViolentIndifference said...

I'll have to admit that the government knows best on this one.

After all, they get 100% of the pork pushed through the congress.

damaged justice said...

Politicians are frustrated philosophers who grew bored with proving that cats were ducks.

Sherm said...

This'd be a whole lot more interesting with pictures:

http://www.suratnaturopathic.com/blog/wdycf/

nummy

staghounds said...

Certainly the amendment was in force during Roman days-

"Cui Bono?"

And, speaking as the lawyer who roved that it was legal to commercially sell salmonella infected chicken in the Western District of Virginia, the CFR often contains some pretty eye opening and stomach unsettling stuff.

For example, do you know what a "Cornish game hen" is?

A baby chicken.

Will said...

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.'

Same for hamburger.

I worked for a food distributor about 1970. One of my duties was making patties. The process required a 40lb box of frozen cow parts (everything but bones and hooves). A bandsaw, ice pick, sausage grinder, very large mixing tub, a 55 gal barrel of fat chunks, a scale, and a patty shaping/stacking machine was used. The scale was used to add the required amount of fat to the mixing tub to make the three grades of burgers. IIRC, 10-20-30% fat content.

I avoided eating hamburgers for a while after that job.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

I'll go along with the gummint's definition on this one. I mean, just because there was industrial machinery involved doesn't mean that stuff became a vegetable.

global village idiot said...

Last year, when I was at Balad Air Base, the acronym AMR stood for "Air Movement Request."

Thanks a MILLION, Tam.

gvi (reaching for mental floss)

irishdutchuncle said...

so true, and so well said.

(you should write for a living. merry Christmas)

Anonymous said...

Statesmen? Sorry, we're all out of those. I've been looking for a mature adult, but we seem to be out of those as well...

mc said...

I am quite familiar with an individual who set up a leasing deal during the mid nineties. He had to go check out the equipment. The company would set up shop across from a slaughter house and buy for very cheap what the house would have been discarding. Ugh. Then they had these new machines and sluries which would spin the product at crazy speeds and collect what flung off. He will not eat at Taco Bell.
I think they have also changed or abandoned the term "by-products"

Dr. StrangeGun said...

IMHO, as long as it's clean and still cow, it's cow. Same with the other animals.

And as far as the game hens go... I raised chickens once a long time ago, for a project. I'm familiar with 'em. It only seems to me a little inefficient... chickens aren't exactly brainy, and a young one isn't missing anything over an old one. They honestly appeared to me about as intelligent as a walking vegetable capable of scratching for it's own sustenance.