Meat Glue

[grassfarmer]

A customer sent me a link to this Australian video that's doing the rounds on the internet - anyone heard of this practise and if so does it take place in Canada?

http://d.yimg.com/nl/australia/site/player.swf?vid=24472661&repeat=0&browseCarouselUI= hide%22>

[per]

Before BSE bloodmeal from High River was hauled to a plant in Strathmore to make meatglue. For obvious reasons it had to move south.

Just speculating now but wouldn't anything preformed be glued together somehow? Chicken nuggets, turkey roll and such?

[kato]

http://www.foodproductdesign.com/bgpl/FPDajinomoto5.pdf

I don't know if this information is still current, but at the time they made this brochure, it was approved in Canada for prepared fish products, "simulated" meat products, non-standardized cheese products, non-standardized cream cheese products, yogurt, and non-standardized frozen dairy dessert. I don't know what they mean by non-standardized.

It was not approved for meat as of 2004, but apparently they were trying to get it approved at the time.

I think the point the fellow in the video had about food poisoning due to undercooking was a good one. We have enough trouble with people undercooking hamburgers already.

[wilagro]

Check this out regarding "meat glue".

http://www.thelocal.se/24900/20100210/#

Not much different than what now goes into cold meats where blood plasma is used as a binder. This is not a new product...they are just trying to expand the use of it.

[tman]

From my own personal experiences, I've found that the cooking issue of ground beef depends on whether the meat is from an animal that was grain fed or grass fed. For quite some time now, I've consistently "under cook" my ground beef on the lowest possible temperature and I've never had an issue of getting sick. But my beef comes from my family's (dad's) animals who are mainly grass fed (they only get grain when they need to lead them or lock them up somewhere).

However, I did get hit with something when I ate ground beef at my neighbour's that he bought from the local co-op and the patty was undercooked. That meal went through me just as fast as I ate it.

This all makes sense to me from what I've read about how the animal's diet affects the ph of the rumen and how that affects E. coli in the animals' stomach. Not to mention the living conditions the animals are in in a feedlot vs a pasture environment.

[chalice]

I think the best defense against E. coli is your own normal flora. We very rarely hear of an outbreak of E. coli in a rural population or amongst feedlot workers.
I think it is interesting that you got sick from a hamburger at the neighbors. If it was purchased from a retailer the package of hamburger could have come from who knows how many cows. Where as your homegrown beef it all came from one. When we gather produce from all over we also gather pathogens from all over.
Another thing I notice when I watch the food network is down in the US you can order a medium rare hamburger. Maybe we are just weak in Canada?

[grassfarmer]

"Another thing I notice when I watch the food network is down in the US you can order a medium rare hamburger. Maybe we are just weak in Canada?"

Or maybe they are just weak in the head? I wouldn't be eating any medium rare hamburger that was killed in a large plant here or the US. On the other hand we have several customers that eat our ground beef raw in the form of steak tartare and swear it does them the world of good.

[kato]

I worked far too long at a vet clinic, and prepared far too many samples for the lab to ever eat any meat rare.... ever. LOL