In case you missed this story that ran on MSNBC yesterday, Mcdonald's admitted that they have been treating beef with ammonium hydroxide. In addition to being used in fertilizers, household cleaners and homemade explosives, ammonium hydroxide has been used to extend beef products as well as an additive in other food products.
The USDA classifies it as [generally recognized as safe], so food companies are exempt from listing it on labels.
Jamie Oliver, a well known British chef began a campaign to get this chemical out of our food chain and said that, "The use of treated scrap meat "to me as a chef and a food lover is shocking," Oliver said. "… Basically we're taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it 'fit' for humans."
In a statement, McDonald's clarified that it stopped using "select lean beef trimmings" — its preferred term for scrap meat soaked in ammonium hydroxide and ground into a pink meat-like paste — at the beginning of last year.