Major grocery store chains are now dropping products containing pink slime. Perhaps they are simply responding to market conditions. It is not just individuals making the call - it is the market in action.
If the label says “Ground Chuck”, one would not be expecting other parts of the animal in there. If the label says “Ground Chuck with nibs of bovine rectum and digestive tract treated with ammonia”, nobody would buy it (rightly or wrongly). No amount of Texas Governors on TV eating the stuff will make people feel it is OK.
I know this, because I cut way back; I didn’t eliminate it altogether.
My feeling about food is that it’s not possible to eliminate everything that can possibly cause cancer, heart disease or any other nastiness, real or imagined, from our diet. It’s just not. Yet I know people who have given up so many foods on that basis that they become at least somewhat malnourished because they’re forsaking valuable sources of nutrients for fear of a relatively trivial risk of disease that may or may not even happen. Yet they convince themselves and are convinced that they’re “eating healthy”.
Sociologist Barry Glassner’s excellent book The Gospel of Food is a very readable commentary on our fear of food and what goes in it. It’s worth reading if you’re interested in a sane, rational point of view.