The Name Game In Business, i.e. Pink Slime

A catchy name that conveys an image can also make story news worthy.  The media was giving a lot of attention to “Pink Slime”.  What is “Pink Slime”?  Is it something bad, or is it a safe meat product?  If this product has been used in our meat products for decades, how bad a product is it for us to consume?

If the facts end up showing it is safe and nutritious beef trimmings, where did the name “Pink Slime” come from?  What should this product be called?  I kind of like “Dead Cow Bits and Pieces” myself.  Does the name game convey an image? 

I hope the current controversy over “Pink Slime” has some basis in fact and not just a good media story, because the resulting costs are huge.  It has cost the meat industry thousands of dollars and hundreds of people have lost their jobs.  Don’t think it won’t cost you when you buy meat, because it will. 

I am not saying all meat processors are perfect, but most turn out a good product.  My brother worked in meat processing plant for a while.  He taught me a lot about how to select the best cuts of beef. 

We have all heard stories of people that worked in meat processing plants that would not eat hot dogs because of what was in them.  Just what is a hot dog other than “Pink Slime”?  Most people still like hot dogs.  What would happen to baseball without hot dogs?

I was raised on a farm.  We raised our own cows, pigs

and chickens for our meat.  We butchered our own hogs and chickens.  I won’t go into details for you city folk, as I don’t want to turn more of you into vegetarians. 

The cows we just field dressed and took to the local locker plant for processing and freezing.  The locker plant was a building with a section refrigerated to below freezing.  The refrigerated portion of the building had large storage bins that people rented to store their frozen meat. 

One of my favorite meals was when we butchered a hog.  That night, Mom would slice the fresh tenderloin into small patties and fry them in a pan with butter.  Good eating.

We used all the fat from the hog to render our own lard.  Lard was a preferred ingredient for many baked items.  Good eating.  We were not big on eating healthy on the farm. 

When we butchered a hog, we also always made “Head Cheese.”  “Head Cheese” is all the trimmings and everything that can be scraped off and out of the hog’s skull.  As I remember, we threw away the brain, eyes and ears, but used the tongue.  Dad would smash the skull with a sledgehammer, and scrape off all the meat.  Mom would pick out any bone fragments.  This “meat” was then cooked and ground up very fine.  I guess we could have called it “Brown Slime” instead of “Head Cheese.”  We served it chilled as sandwich meat.  Done right, Head Cheese might even be considered a delicacy. 

Once when I was a kid, we had a bunch of relatives over and Mom served “Head Cheese” on fresh homemade buttered buns.  They were delicious.  I waited until some of my cousins were on their second or third sandwich before I told them what they were eating.  Some of them got a little green. 

A name can mean a lot.  A name can convey a good image or a bad image.  A couple other names currently thrown around in the food industry are “Lite” and “Low Fat”.  Just what do they mean?  They may not mean what you thought. 

I heard one nutritionist on TV say we should go through our refrigerators, cupboards and pantries, and throw away anything that had the label “Lite”.  Who knows?

I will talk more about the name game in politics later.