Uh-oh. Looks like we're gettin' gas from and in our meat! Personally,
I prefer mine with low-oxygen atmospheres.

=========================================


"FDA Is Urged to Ban Carbon-Monoxide-Treated Meat"

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 20, 2006; Page A01

Picture two steaks on a grocer's shelf, each hermetically sealed in
clear plastic wrap. One is bright pink, rimmed with a crescent of
pearly white fat. The other is brown, its fat the color of a smoker's
teeth.

Which do you reach for?

The meat industry knows the answer, which is why it has quietly begun
to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide.

The gas, harmless to health at the levels being used, gives meat a
bright pink color that lasts weeks. The hope is that it will save the
industry much of the $1 billion it says it loses annually from having
to discount or discard meat that is reasonably fresh and perfectly safe
but no longer pretty.

But the growing use of carbon monoxide as a "pigment fixative" is
alarming consumer advocates and others who say it deceives shoppers who
depend on color to help them avoid spoiled meat. Those critics are
challenging the Food and Drug Administration and the nation's powerful
meat industry, saying the agency violated its own rules by allowing the
practice without a formal evaluation of its impact on consumer safety.

"This meat stays red and stays red and stays red," said Don Berdahl,
vice president and laboratory director at Kalsec Foods in Kalamazoo,
Mich., a maker of natural food extracts that has petitioned the FDA to
ban the practice.

If nothing else, Berdahl and others say, carbon-monoxide-treated meat
should be labeled so consumers will know not to trust their eyes.

The legal offensive has the meat industry seeing red. Officials deny
their foes' claim that carbon monoxide is a "colorant" -- a category
that would require a full FDA review -- saying it helps meat retain its
naturally red color.

Besides, industry representatives say, color is a poor indicator of
freshness as meat turns brown from exposure to oxygen long before it
goes bad.

"When a product reaches the point of spoilage, there will be other
signs that will be evidenced -- for example odor, slime formation and a
bulging package -- so the product will not smell or look right," said
Ann Boeckman, a lawyer with the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson. It
represents Precept Foods LLC, a joint venture between Cargill Meat
Solutions Corp. and Hormel Foods Corp. that helped pioneer the
technology.

Much is at stake. The U.S. market in "case ready" meats -- those
packaged immediately after slaughter, eliminating the need for butchers
at grocery stores -- is approaching $10 billion and growing, said Steve
Kay of Cattle Buyers Weekly, which tracks the industry from Petaluma,
Calif. Tyson Foods, for example -- one of three meat packagers that has
received a green light from the FDA to use carbon monoxide -- just
opened a $100 million plant in Texas to churn out more case-ready
"modified atmosphere" packaged meats, Kay said.

No one knows how much carbon-monoxide-treated meat is being sold; the
companies involved are privately held or keep that information secret.
But the potential is seen as great. The new technology "will finally
make this the case-ready revolution, rather than the case-ready
evolution," said Mark Klein, director of communications for Cargill's
meat business.

It is a revolution some want stopped in its tracks.

"We feel it's a huge consumer right-to-know issue," said Donna
Rosenbaum of Safe Tables Our Priority, an advocacy group in Burlington,
Vt., created after four children died and hundreds became sick after
eating tainted hamburgers from Jack in the Box restaurants in 1992 and
1993. Last month, the Burlington group and the Consumer Federation of
America wrote to the FDA in support of a ban.

At the core of the issue is how the FDA has assessed companies'
requests to use carbon monoxide in their packaging.

It started about five years ago, when Pactiv Corp. of Lake Forest,
Ill., urged the FDA to declare the approach "generally recognized as
safe," or GRAS -- a regulatory category that allows a firm to proceed
with its plans without public review or formal agency "approval."

The FDA told Pactiv in 2002 it had no argument with the proposal. In
2004, Precept Foods received a similar letter, and recently Tyson did
as well.

The FDA has also deemed carbon monoxide GRAS for keeping tuna looking
fresh.

Kalsec acknowledges having an economic interest in fighting the
practice. The company sells extracts of rosemary and other natural
essences that help block the oxidation that turns meat brown. Its
products have allowed meat packagers to use high-oxygen atmospheres in
sealed packages to maintain freshness without having to worry about
browning.

That is a market that could largely disappear as packagers switch to
low-oxygen atmospheres with carbon monoxide -- an approach that keeps
meat looking red not just longer, but almost indefinitely.

But Kalsec, and the consumer advocates who have signed on to the fight,
say it is not just the market in extracts that is at risk.

They note that the European Union has banned the use of carbon monoxide
as a color stabilizer in meat and fish. A December 2001 report from the
European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food concluded that the
gas (whose chemical abbreviation is "CO") did not pose a risk as long
as food was kept cold enough during storage and transport to prevent
microbial growth. But should the meat become inadvertently warmer at
some point, it warned, "the presence of CO may mask visual evidence of
spoilage."

How is it, Berdahl and others ask, that something can be deemed
"generally recognized as safe" when there is enough scientific debate
over the issue to warrant a ban in Europe?

"I just picture a refrigerator truck breaking down in Arizona and
sitting there for an afternoon. Then, 'Hey, we got it repaired and
nobody knows the difference,' and there you go."

Opponents also say the FDA was wrong to consider carbon monoxide a
color fixative rather than a color additive -- a crucial decision
because additives must pass a rigorous FDA review. They note that
freshly cut meat looks purplish red, and that the addition of carbon
monoxide -- which binds to a muscle protein called myoglobin -- turns
it irreversibly pink.

Proponents of the gas counter that meat turns from purple to red just
from sitting in air, and that CO prevents the next step, in which meats
turn brown. They also say consumers should pay attention to "sell or
freeze by" dates as the best indicator of freshness.

George H. Pauli, associate director for science and policy in the FDA's
Office of Food Additive Safety, defended the agency's decisions. "In
general, statute says you cannot use [substances] in a deceptive
manner, and the question is what is a deceptive manner," Pauli said.

He emphasized that the agency has never formally approved the gas's
use, but rather looked at information provided by the companies and
decided not to object.

"We said, 'Thank you, you've helped inform us,' " Pauli said.

That is what has opponents most upset.

"The FDA should not have accepted carbon monoxide in meat without doing
its own independent evaluation of the safety implications," Elizabeth
Campbell, former head of the FDA's office of food labeling, wrote in a
statement released in November.

Bucky Gwartney, executive director for research and knowledge
management for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, chafes at the
idea that the industry is trying to fool consumers.

"It would be ludicrous for a company to adopt a process that would
undermine what we all want, which is to assure that food is safe,"
Gwartney said. "Maybe it needs to be more transparent and public," he
acknowledged. "If that's what we need to do, we'll probably do that as
an industry."

Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

Akneigh Wombuster wrote:

Uh-oh. Looks like we're gettin' gas from and in our meat! Personally,
I prefer mine with low-oxygen atmospheres.

=========================================

"FDA Is Urged to Ban Carbon-Monoxide-Treated Meat"

I wonder if ozone would do the same thing?
Ozone has similar toxicity to carbon monoxide,
because they both bind strongly to hemoglobin.

In red meat, the color reactions are with
a similar molecule, myoglobin.

I think it'd be easier to sell ozone to consumers,
and there might be a useful antiseptic effect.

Gas? I'll just blame it on the dog, same as always.

On 22 Feb 2006 07:48:57 -0800, wrote:


Mark Thorson wrote:
Akneigh Wombuster wrote:

Uh-oh. Looks like we're gettin' gas from and in our meat! Personally,
I prefer mine with low-oxygen atmospheres.

=========================================

"FDA Is Urged to Ban Carbon-Monoxide-Treated Meat"

I wonder if ozone would do the same thing?
Ozone has similar toxicity to carbon monoxide,
because they both bind strongly to hemoglobin.

In red meat, the color reactions are with
a similar molecule, myoglobin.

I think it'd be easier to sell ozone to consumers,
and there might be a useful antiseptic effect.

Whjat about Dihydrogen Monoxide?

-bwg

Good point! I hear that it caused over 50 000 deaths in New Orleans just this
past summer alone!

Suki