Please read the following case and answer the questions that follow, for oral presentation in class next week:

Marketing Ethics: Pink Slime

In the early $1990$s$,$ Eldon Roth figured out a way to profit from slaughterhouse meat trimmings, by$-$products that were once used only in pet food and cooking oil. This cheap and safe beef product is called "lean, finely textured beef" $($LFTB$).$ The fatty bits of beef are heated and treated with a puff of ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria. You've probably eaten many hamburgers that included LFTB prepared by fast$-$food restaurants, at school cafeterias, or even in your own kitchen. LFTB makes ground beef leaner and cheaper. Shortly after it was developed, a health safety inspector dubbed LFTB "pink slime," but the name didn't become public until the major "pink slime" media brouhaha erupted in $2012.$

Consumers were repulsed to learn that they were eating unappealing beef parts that were "soaked in ammonia." Sales of ground beef fell $11$ percent in one month. Ground beef producer AFA Foods sought bankruptcy protection and Cargill lost $80$ percent of its customers. The industry's leading LFTB manufacturer, Beef Products, Inc., shuttered $75$ percent of its processing plants and laid off $650$ workers. McDonald's and other fast$-$food restaurants, supermarkets, and institutional buyers such as schools and hospitals discontinued using beef products containing LFTB$,$ even though the safe and inexpensive product has been around for many years.

Questions:

Was the uproar over LFTB warranted, given the fact that it is a product deemed safe for consumption by the U$.$S$.$ Food and Drug Administration? Explain.

$(5$ marks$)$

Research a minimum of FIVE other types of products or controversial ingredients that are included in consumer products that could face a similar fate if consumers were aware of them.

$(15$ marks$)$