Texas Meat Manufacturers Sold Inferior Meat To Prisons Across The Country

Pink Slime Taste Test — This Thursday, March 15, 2012 photo shows ground beef containing what is derisively referred to as "pink slime," or what the meat industry calls "lean, finely textured beef," right, and pure 85% lean ground beef, in Concord, N.H. Under a change announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, districts that get food through the government's school lunch program will be allowed to say no to ground beef containing the ammonia-treated filler and choose filler-free meat instead. The low-cost filler is made from fatty meat scraps that are heated to remove most of the fat, then treated with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

October 02, 2019

Updated August 07, 2023

Meat company West Texas Provisions, Inc sold over $1 million of degraded meat to 32 prison institutions in 18 states, the U.S. Department of Justice announced last month. The meat was marketed by West Texas Provisions as USDA approved, when in fact no such inspection was held. The meat packing plant also violated ground meat standards by adding whole cow hearts into their products.

Food writer Corby Kummer joined Boston Public Radio on Tuesday to explain why this violates health and ethics standards.

"They paid no attention to food safety for meat that went into prisons and [West Texas Provisions] would send people in the night, when the inspectors weren't there, to cut up the heart valves and put them in," he said. "This kind of contempt treats people as second class citizens, as if they aren't really people."

This kind of health abuse only adds to the unjust treatment that prisoners face, Kummer said.

"It is part of the whole movement in this country to treat prisoners as animals, as refuse and as members of society who don't deserve any kind of humane treatment," he said. "This is defeating the whole purpose of the correctional system, which is trying to get people back into society, because how do they expect these people to want to be productive members of society when they've been abused in prison?"

Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer, and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy.