SOLVED: The "potted meat" and "Mechanically separated chicken" mysteries

Bush_Eats_Beef

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Mon Aug-29-05 05:35 PM
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SOLVED: The "potted meat" and "Mechanically separated chicken" mysteries

http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=24695

Surprisingly, this staple of the boxcar hobo diet is available in virtually every supermarket, usually tucked between cans of tuna and pre-made chili. At a total cost of $1.47, we picked up two three-ounce cans of Armour Potted Meat (dubbed �America�s Favorite� on the can) and one 5.5-ounce can of Libby�s Potted Meat Food Product. Total combined nutritional value: 510 calories, 38 grams of fat, and for all you Atkins dieters, a whopping 47 grams of protein and no carbs. While perusing the unique nutritional statistics on the label, our eyes were inevitably drawn to the ingredients: Mechanically separated chicken, beef tripe, partially defatted cooked beef fatty tissue, beef hearts, water, partially defatted cooked pork fatty tissue, salt and less than 2% mustard, garlic, vinegar, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite, natural flavors.

While beef hearts and beef tripe (the hard-to-digest muscular lining of the bovine stomach) sounded like things you would only eat on Fear Factor if promised a fabulous cash prize, at least they were recognizable. Mechanically separated chicken just sounded evil. Without delay, we dialed the 800 number on the Armour can to get some answers. �Mechanically separated chicken (MSC) is just chicken that has been separated by a machine,� claimed �Cindy,� a customer service representative from the Dial Corporation, owner of Armour Foods. �If you want to know more, I�ll have to transfer you to a product specialist.�

�These companies are famous for not talking about much of anything, actually,� says Richard Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, the only chicken industry lobbying group willing to speak on the record about mechanically separated chicken. �They tend to not like to talk about how they fabricate some of these manufactured products.�

Could Lobb shed some light on the mystery of mechanically separated chicken? Unfortunately, yes. �The mechanical separator basically has a screw and a drive, and it just presses the chicken part against a fine screen at incredibly high pressure and the meat is squeezed off through a sieve. It�s usually dark meat from the drumstick or the thigh or possibly the back, which has meat that�s been locked up in the bones.� In other words, these are the scraps that the human separators simply cannot pick off. �I�ve actually seen them make it at the plant,� said Lobb, in a rare moment of frankness. �It looks like pink toothpaste when it comes out of the machine.� MSC can also be found in hot dogs, where it cannot exceed 12% of the contents and is required by law to be labeled as mechanically separated meat. But what about the oxymoronic-sounding �partially defatted cooked beef/pork fatty tissue.� Not even Richard Lobb could explain that one. However, our exhaustive search of supermarket ingredient labels found only one other product which contained this substance: dog food.