The Question Is, Can You Still Call It "Meat?"
Engineering a Safer Burger Technology Is Entrepreneur's Main Ingredient for Bacteria-Free Beef
By Annys Shin Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 12, 2008; D01
SOUTH SIOUX CITY, Neb. -- The key to a safer meat supply may be in a two-story white building next to a meat-packing plant just south of the Missouri River.
The building houses a processing plant that produces frozen lean beef used in 75 percent of hamburger patties sold in the United States. It is also a fortress against potentially lethal bacteria.
. . . Roth, 65, started his company, Beef Products Inc., in 1981 after developing a way to use centrifuges to extract valuable lean beef from less valuable, fattier trimmings. The meat BPI produces is just one component in ground beef, usually no more than 25 percent of the final product.
A single patty can contain meat from multiple processors, and even multiple countries, which makes for a public-health challenge.
. . . challenge Roth and his engineers faced was calibrating…