Pink Slime Marketing Strategy

“Can you hear me now? …Good” “Ba Da Da Da Da, I’m lovin’ it” “Pork… The other white meat.” “You’re not you when you’re hungry!” “Zoom Zoom”. Slogans like these are extremely appealing and can get lodged in your memory forever. It doesn’t take much for a consumer to be lured by catchy slogans when it comes to making financial choices. Marketing influences are especially successful when it comes to decisions about food. This is a result of an uneducated consumer base. Perception versus reality of the agriculture industry is an uphill battle that we as advocates of agriculture fight daily.
One marketing strategy that guarantees a certain standard meat quality is the Certified Angus Beef program. Certified Angus Beef relies on the ignorance of the average consumer in order to increase profit revenues. When an uneducated consumer goes into the grocery store, they automatically gravitate toward the Certified Angus Beef sticker, not knowing that further down the aisle they could be purchasing meat at
This value added product is essentially ground beef, just processed to a finer texture than what we’re used to buying in the store. “Pink slime” or more properly called in the industry lean finely textured beef, is a mixture used as a filler for different types of products. According to Beef Products Incorporated, America’s major supplier of lean finely textured beef, their product is 94%-97% lean beef, and they have new and innovative processes to ensure a higher quality meat. This negatively portrayed “pink slime” is packaged with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill the E. Coli and Salmonella pathogens, which makes it safe to eat. But media has not made it seem that way to consumers’ viewpoints. When Americans discovered what “pink slime” really was, through the eyes of news outlets, Beef Products Incorporated was forced to shut down 3 of its 4 production plants, and lay off more than 700