At least four reporters have been ordered to turn over documents to attorneys representing America's largest "pink slime" producer, Beef Products Inc, in a $1.2-billion defamation lawsuit against ABC News and other news organizations.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has released a set of internal discussions about "pink slime", shedding light on early efforts to respond to public outcry over its presence in processed food.
It is its first response to a FOIA request, filed by Government Attic, requesting copies of its deliberations. — Read the rest
Beef Products Inc. (BPI), manufacturer of "lean finely textured beef," aka "pink slime," announces it will shut down three of its four plants on May 25. The plants destined for closure are in Amarillo, TX; Garden City, KS; and Waterloo, IA. — Read the rest
Grist's article on local, artisan connective tissue and beef paste is possibly my favorite April Fools story of 2012.
I haven't written much about pink slime—that creamy mixture of meat and animal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of industrial meat processing.
Most of what's being written about this lately comes from a place of outrage. And I'm really not sure I can get outraged about pink slime. — Read the rest
Black Sabbath meets Ronald McDonald in this drive-thru metal extravaganza. Members include Ronald Osbourne on vocals, Slayer MacCheeze on guitars, Grimalice on bass, and The Catburglar on drums.
Originally from "Birmingham(burger)," and now based "out of Los Angeles, CA but born from the bowels of Outer Space, Mac Sabbath is here, and it is time for a dinner rock revolution." — Read the rest
Louis Weisz tackles an enduring question that has consumed reddit and YouTube, creating several iterations of his Meat Beater 9000 device and his upgraded Poultry Punisher. He's able to raise the temperature of a chicken almost 30 degrees Fahrenheit, but slapping problems start to emerge above those temps. — Read the rest
At The New Republic, Alex Shephard traces the rise of "zombie" magazines: respected but failed outlets raised from the dead to crank out bizarre, low-quality or extremist content that wears the old masthead's prestigious corpse. Zombie king is "Newsweek", in the news this week after publishing a racist legal falsehood to suggest Kamala Harris is ineligible for high office. — Read the rest
Columbia Journalism School's Tow Center has published the results of a longrunning investigation into a network of shadowy "local news" sites whose bulk content is composed of algorithmically generated stories about subjects like local rates of gas tax, or which bridges are most structurally sound.
This summer, ABC News made a historically large payout to settle a defamation lawsuit over 'pink slime,' or what the meat industry likes to call 'lean finely textured beef.'
No, that's not referring to Hulk Hogan, but there is a worrisome connection between this media lawsuit and the one backed by Peter Thiel against Gawker, which silenced that publication. — Read the rest
The weirdo Soviet-era television ads directed by Harry Egipt are the stuff of internet legend, and we've blogged about them here on Boing Boing many times over many years. His 30-second meditation on ground chicken meat is a surrealist vegetarian nightmare that pre-dates "pink slime" hysteria by half a century; his lightly erotic ice cream ads are stil creamily creepy. — Read the rest
"I'm just a rock n' roller from Beverly Hills / My name is Ariel... Pink!"
Well, okay. Sing it, Ariel! Peculiar popsmith Ariel Pink and his Haunted Graffiti are back, and as absurdly delightful and infectiously catchy as ever. Hella amusingly weird too - just check out the damaged Beach Boys vibe of, uh, "Schnitzel Boogie". Oh, and of course AP couldn't resist titling a track here, "Pink Slime"!
