Governor Branstand (L) and Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The nation’s top agricultural official and Iowa’s governor joined forces this afternoon to wage a public relations campaign for a lean beef product that critics have labeled “pink slime.”
AUDIO of news conference.
“Let me reiterate without any equivocation something that we have said hundreds of times — hundreds of time in print media, hundreds of time in broadcast media and in radio: this product is safe,” U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack said. “There’s not question about it. We have said that repeatedly. We will continue to say it.”
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad said he’s convinced Iowa’s largest grocery store chain — Hy-Vee Food Stores — to keep the product in their stores.
“For over 30 years people like me have been eating this along with my family,” Branstad said. :”It’s 100 eprcent beef and it’s a good, quality product and it’s lower in costs and, besides that, it’s safer because it kills the e-coli,” Branstad said.
Branstad and the governors of Texas and Kansas will visit a plant across the border from Sioux City tomorrow that makes this product. Beef Products Incorporated has already shut down its plant in Waterloo where 200 people lost their jobs.