DES MOINES, Iowa — Hoping to stave off “misinformation” about what critics have labeled “pink slime,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad held a news conference March 28 to address what they call media “distortions” about the beef additive.

In fact, Branstad said the media’s “misinformation” on what the USDA has defined as lean fine textured beef (LFTB) is hurting Iowa and U.S. agriculture.

“I believe that the national media have permeated this discussion with a poisonous tone that is detrimental to our beef industry, that will hurt jobs and will hurt cattle producers in the state of Iowa,” he told reporters gathered at the Statehouse in Des Moines.

“The time for bad-mouthing and distortions is over. The time for the truth to prevail and combat this ugly situation that we currently find ourselves in is here.”

Branstad and Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, said reports from the media about LFTB as “pink slime” have forced the meat’s producer, Beef Products, Inc. (BPI), to temporarily suspend operations at its plants in Waterloo, Iowa, Garden City, Kan., and Amarillo, Texas, laying off more than 650 workers.

“In the interim, we continue to stand by our lean beef as 100 percent wholesome, safe and nutritious, and we will continue to defend BPI against the mischaracterizations and irresponsible misrepresentations sweeping the media landscape,” said Eldon Roth, president and CEO of BPI, based in Dakota Dukes, S.D.

Branstad said he and U.S. consumers have been eating LFTB for 30 years, which he added is 100 percent beef, 95 percent lean, low-fat and nutritious. Vilsack, who said “without any equivocation” that BPI’s beef products are safe, has already met with grocery store executives such as Hy-Vee, Inc. CEO Richard Jurgens to encourage them to continue selling LFTB.

“I can guarantee you that if we felt that this was unsafe, we wouldn’t allow it to be marketed and we wouldn’t make it part of our school lunch program,” Vilsack said.

As a result, the West Des Moines-based Hy-Vee has recently reversed its decision to pull LFTB from its meat counters and returned to selling it in all its Midwest stores, based on numerous customer requests for the product.

“Following our recent decision to stop purchasing ground beef containing LFTB, we heard from many customers who asked us to continue carrying this product,” Jurgens said. “Hy-Vee takes great pride in listening to the voices of our customers and offering them outstanding values on the quality products they want to buy.”

In response to this feedback, Jurgens said Hy-Vee will offer both kinds of ground beef, with and without LFTB, which will be identified as such on the package “so customers can determine for themselves which type of ground beef they want to buy.”

Last week, the USDA gave school districts the option of whether to use ground beef with or without the beef additive, which are made up of beef trimmings that use ammonium hydroxide to kill foodborne bacteria. Vilsack said LFTB has long been a staple in the U.S. school lunch program, adding that “the youngsters are getting a product that is lean and, historically, less expensive.

“We’re not in the business of mandates,” he said. “We’re in the business of responding to concerns of our customers – in this case, the school districts.”

Suzy Ketelson, director of food services at the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Community School District, told The Cedar Rapids Gazette she was generally satisfied with the meat the USDA has been offering over the years.

“We have a choice, but for years we’ve used and taken advantage of very high-quality products from the USDA,” she said.

Ketelson said she’s researching options the USDA is planning to offer, but added she doesn’t have enough information at this time to make that decision yet.

Last Thursday, Branstad, along with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, toured BPI’s main production plant in South Sioux City, Neb., and sampled LFTB they said they’ve been eating for years.

“I do not believe workers in plants in Iowa, Kansas and Texas should wonder why they don’t have a job because of misleading headlines,” Branstad said at a news conference following the March 29 tour.

“By taking this safe product out of the market,” Perry said, “grocery retailers and consumers are allowing media inaccuracies to trump sound science.”

“This is a disservice to the beef industry, hundreds of workers who make their livings producing this safe product and consumers as a whole,” he also said in a joint statement representing the coalition of governors who visited the main plant. “Ultimately, it will be the consumer who pays for taking this safe product out of the market.”

As a result, Perry said, the price of ground beef would go up as ranchers work to raise as many as 1.5 million more head of cattle to replace safe beef no longer consumed because of “the baseless media scare.

“We urge grocery retailers, consumers, restaurants and members of the media to seek the facts behind lean, finely textured beef,” he said. “Science supports keeping the lean beef product on grocery store shelves for the benefit of American agriculture and consumers alike. Let’s call this product what it is, and let ‘pink slime’ become a term of the past.”