Although it was interesting to see the other side of this controversy, I have to agree with the folks here who felt it was too much like a PR piece. I don't know why, but every time the article mentioned the 'blogger', I detected a bit of disdain.

The standout point for me, from the Bloomberg article was that ammonia occurs naturally in beef. I don't know how much more appetizing it makes it, but it starts to sound a lot different than a ammonia of the household-cleaner variety.

What I don't understand is why, with all of the food-science being done on mass produced meat to make it smell like this, and feel like that, we even need to bother using animals in the first place. This recent piece by Mark Bittman on a new and improved fake-meat is pretty interesting in that regard: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/finally-fak...

The people here who talk about killing your own meat, and how people know that an animal died to get to their plate, and so on, I think, are perpetuating a false equivalence. The common perception, crafted by the food industry, is a cow on a placid farm that lives to a nice old age. A lot of money goes towards alleviating the image of thousands of sick, smelly cattle cramped into prison cells. (Full disclosure: I've become more and more of a vegetarian over time.)

So, besides moral issues related to suffering and health issues like increased resistance to antibiotics due to improper handling of waste at farms, there's also the issue of how much petroleum it takes to produce a calorie of beef (3 to 1 calories, or something similar if I remember correctly). And how toxic some of these farms are to the water supply. And how cow-released methane may be one of the main contributors to global warming. And so on.

But, I'm not really posting here to posit what some may consider to be fringe views regarding our food supply. What I found interesting about the article, and I'm guessing why it was posted here in the first place is that the Roth was a hacker. He came up with a brilliant solution to a problem. And, it would appear from the article that his technology is now under-fire because it makes for an easy target. Ammonia is the stuff you clean your counter with; you're not supposed to spray it on your hamburger.

I'm not a fan of ends-justify-the-means tactics, an after reading the article I do get the sense that people who would like to see reform in the food industry are using this as a way of raising public outcry. Shining a light on where our food comes from is good. But, unfortunately the outcome of this story will likely mean that an innovator is the loser and the industry at large will carry on just fine.

What would be great is to see Roth, or someone else with a hacker mentality set about transforming the industry into something more sustainable and less reliant on the farming of animals. The Bittman piece linked to above shows that it's possible for us to begin replacing at least some of our meat into non-animal varieties. Transforming a really old-school industry full of entrenched interests and out-dated – prehistoric – means of production should appeal to someone here, right?

Anyway, sorry for the long post – the subject is fascinating to me.