Packaging beef [inside propaganda]

Carbon monoxide - it's what's for dinner.
It's also a slogan that will never be embraced by a beef industry blitzed by consumer groups for injecting carbon monoxide, the toxic gas found in tailpipe exhaust, into meat packages.
The carbon monoxide, which the Food and Drug Administration says is harmless at the levels being used, keeps the meat looking red for weeks by replacing the oxygen that would otherwise turn it the color of an old leather shoe.

I can't honestly believe that this is what passes for news these days. But I say that all the time so this should be nothing new. First of all, I disagree with this article entirely as liberal propaganda. The first paragraphs paint an entirely different picture than the way this should have been "pitched" as an easy news story but this was front-page-center of the Denver Post this morning. Luckily, I had the time to chill in Starbucks this morning for about 40 minutes before I had to go to work.

To be completely fair, would you buy meat that looked like shoe leather, whether or not it was edible? Also, who are we to challenge what the FDA says is "acceptable" and if we can challenge it with gas in beef packaging, why can't we challenge it everywhere? I don't even understand why people even want to discuss this and why the people that invoked this article don't just shop at Wild Oats instead. Or be vegetarians.

If you actually read the article, the ending isn't nearly as ridiculous as the beginning but if you're just glancing at the beginning you'll (hopefully) become just as enraged as I did, which is why I read the entire article. Give me a break, people, you're complaining about an injection of gas that will not, in any way shape or form, harm you in this instance, but will entice you to buy the product that you should be buying. You can't tell me there's fault in making sure people buy a product that is edible instead of allowing them to pass it up as inedible just for the color. If meat started going "bad" and not being bought, the article is right, the prices would go up, and then we might as well all shop at Wild Oats anyway, right?