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Published: September 21 2012

In the ‘What was that I just consumed department’?

ABC News was hit with a $1.2 billion defamation lawsuit by Beef products Inc. a South Dakota meat processor. It was accused of misleading viewers into believing that a product that critics have dubbed "pink slime" was unsafe. When asked what it would do with all that money if they won, Beef Products Inc. said that it would really like to come up with a better name.

They claim the network should have used other words to describe the amorphous pinkish liquidy substance like “lean finely textured beef." That particular phrase was finally arrived at when ‘gooey stuff’ and ‘Big Plaque Attack’ didn’t score well with the focus groups.

Buzz Fleischman - Columnist Page. They conceded that although it wouldn’t kill you, it sure doesn’t look good and proceeded to merchandise the stuff to be ‘the official slime’ to interested groups like MTV for their Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

Kate Perry said, “Hey, nothing wrong with a little sliming. I’m still alive and my career took a big bounce after my KCA appearance.

Beef Products' lawyer Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney in Chicago, said "To call a food product slime is the most pejorative term that could be imagined. It’s almost as bad as calling a politician a real human being with feelings.”

The network said "Constitutionally, the plaintiff has to show ABC knew what it was broadcasting was false, or had very strong reasons to know, and ignored them," he said. "It's a very hard standard to overcome. Dan Webb will have his hands full; and not with pink slime!”

In 2004 the product was approved for ‘limited human consumption’ and began to be used as a food additive to ground beef and beef-based processed meats as filler, as long as it was not more than 15 percent of that product. Co-incidentally, not more than 15 percent of beef consumers have been glowing in the dark lately and don’t know why.

P.E.T.A. has stepped into the ‘pink slime’ outcry with this statement, “Before it was slime, it was alive and deserves the respect that all life should get. It has been deboned, squeezed, pummeled, stretched, boiled, mechanically separated, disinfected, and finally dumped into a centrifuge to separate the fat from the beef trimmings. If you went through that, how would you feel?”

One could say that it’s not as bad as a can of chicken noodle soup which has almost 2,000 mg of sodium. At least we know what sodium is.

The USDA maintains that pink slime in ground beef is safe and that the ban on federal funding for horse meat inspections has been lifted as well. Oh boy; a new can of ‘worms’.

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