5. SEASON FINAL FOOD HISTORY ☢️ The Pink Slime Scandal - Ammonia in Ground Beef 🥩

Here's one of the wildest stories of (lacking) food regulation in the US: In 2008 over 70% of all ground beef sold in the US contained "pink slime," - ammonia-treated scraps. These trimmings would usually be processed into pet food and cooking oil due to higher levels of fecal contamination. Well, the company Beef Products Inc found a way to kill the E.Coli and Salmonella bacteria by spraying the scraps with ammonia and increasing the PH to 9.5. After all, the human food market is more profitable than pet food. Grrreat.... But then it all blew up, starting with an investigative news story by the New York Times in 2009 (and winning the author Michael Moss a Pulitzer Prize)...