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Cargill Inc, one of the world’s largest beef processors, will begin labeling when its finely textured beef is used in the making of its U.S. ground beef products, the company told Reuters on Tuesday.

The move by the U.S. meat manufacturer comes as consumers increasingly demand more transparency in how agribusiness companies make the food they eat and how these products are disclosed on the packaging.

The debate over food labeling has roiled for months, from last year’s public and media furor over a rival beef product – which critics had dubbed “pink slime” – to Tuesday’s vote in Washington state over whether to require labeling of genetically modified foods.

Cargill’s finely textured beef is a processed meat product made from chunks of beef, including trimmings, and exposed to citric acid to kill E. coli and other dangerous contaminants. The product, which Cargill has made since 1993, is used to produce higher-volume, less fatty ground beef.

Cargill said the new ground-beef packaging, slated to debut early next year, came about after the agribusiness firm surveyed more than 3,000 consumers over the past 18 months about their views on ground beef and how it is made.

The survey arose after last year’s intense media coverage of South Dakota-based Beef Products Inc, which makes a similar product called “lean finely textured beef,” or LFTB. BPI relies on a different technology than Cargill and uses ammonium hydroxide, rather than citric acid, as a processing agent to kill potential pathogens.

Cargill was able to escape some of the social-media furor over “pink slime” because it uses citric acid, which the public generally perceived at the time as more palatable than the ammonium hydroxide used by BPI.