How cute. It’s a giant pink snake. 
Another vote for strawberry soft-serve. Yes, I know it’s chicken, but even then I guess it still looks too much like ice cream for me to be disgusted. (don’t ask me why)
If you think THAT’s disturbing, avoid This is Why You’re Fat.
I just saw that episode last week - it showed how sausage, head cheese, bologna etc. was made. Totally put me off my processed meat…
I dunno, the picture of caza marzu I saw in the Independent once made me lose my appetite worse than that.
Caza marzu is maggot-infested Pecorino cheese, allegedly a delicacy in parts of Sicily. It’s traditionally eaten with bread…you don’t serve it on bread, you hold the bread in front of your face so the maggots don’t jump into your eyes.
Mmmm…mechanically separated chicken…
I love the comments below it:
The OP picture doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I imagine what CRSP is really having an issue with is his imagination’s depictions of earlier stages of the process.
Maybe I should be disgusted, but I’m not sure why. I mean, we’ve long known that hot dogs, bologna, etc. were made from the least appetizing parts of the cow/pig/chicken/whatever. My attitude has always been, if they can turn obscure, unappetizing parts of slaughtered animals into something that people will want to eat, then why shouldn’t they eat it?
Just because when you do that with chicken, it comes out looking like soft-serve strawberry ice cream, doesn’t really change things any.
That’s what she said.
Mmmmm. Cuitlacoche. Makes that stuff in the OP look like dessert.
The reason that BSE is passed on from it when using cattle bones is that the process can get bone marrow and neurological tissue into the meat. This is not normally unhealthy, bone marrow is a legitimate meat-related product. However, BSE/“Mad Cow” is transmitted primarily via the prions which are resident in the brain and spinal fluid of infected cows, and utilizing this process dramatically increases the chances that the meat from an asymptomatic carrier of BSE will contain enough prions to infect a consumer of said meat.
Basically, the downsides of this process are solely related to the case where there is a prion-based (that is, you can’t cook away the germs) disease that’s resident in bone marrow, brain tissue, or spinal fluid.
Those who find this gross: do you find it more gross that the standard/traditional slaughtering and gutting of cows and chickens?
I’m not sickened by that at all. In fact, I think the ban is perfectly justified - BSE and CJD are pretty nasty diseases.
I so hate being the low hanging fruit.
Is this really qualitatively all that different from when I pick over a chicken carcass, suck the little bits of greasy meat out of the cracks and crevices, crunch up and eat the crispy wingtips (complete with small bones, cartilage, even toasty little bits of feather if I can’t be bothered to pick them all off), then boil up the bones to make stock?
I don’t believe it.
The texture looks similar, but not the long strand like that, or the color.
And that stuff looks a little too poofy.
And not putting it into an over-filled cardboard box.
Recovered meat does look like a paste, but I’m doubting this is it. I’m not an expert or anything, and not grossed out; in fact I think the real thing might look just as bad or worse.
If that is recovered meat, it’s been further processed for some other purpose. That’s not what it looks like coming off the bones.
What you’re saying is the thought you are associating with the picture is disgusting. The picture itself is not disgusting at all. In fact, I think it looks kinda neat. It’s pink swirly stuff, might as well be candy!
Casu marzu video - cute, brief animation at 6:40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyL9Pn8kMZc
Another entry at the site CookingWithGas linked to has the blogger’s experience with mechanically separated chicken as the main ingredient of “potted meat”. The Sneeze - Half zine. Half blog. Half not good with fractions.
Shoot, just give it a French name (Pate de poulet?) and people will pay big bucks for it. It worked for snails!
Oh man a quart of that stuff would make for hilarious strawberry ice-cream prank! Am I the only one that thought mechanically separated meat would look just like that? I mean I’ve known it’s in hot dogs, corn dogs, chicken nuggets, chicken patties and such. Looking at a hot dog it’s pretty easy to think “You know, they just whipped this in a blender and extruded it to shape” you know?
Here is video of mechanical separation. It does not look like the photo in the OP.
It looks worse.