Honest mistakes I can easily tolerate but deliberate cheating makes me angry (probably a leftover from my teaching days when I had absolutely no tolerance for cheating in my classroom) so I’m on a rant. And yes, there are birds involved. Or at least parts of them.
Two evenings ago I cooked a favorite for dinner, fried chicken. We prefer white meat so I purchased a package of three chicken breasts at my local Smith’s grocery store (owned by Kroger). They were huge, so large I’m not convinced they weren’t pterodactyl breasts, so I cut the three breasts into six pieces, marinated them in buttermilk before flouring and seasoning them and then fried them up.
They were tender and tasty (buttermilk makes a difference) but something I discovered when opening the package caused me to have difficulty choking mine down.
This is what I’m going to call the “fluid absorber” that was at the bottom of the chicken package. It’s folded in half so it wouldn’t drip on my countertop. I was literally shocked by how huge and heavy it was so I weighed it on my kitchen scale.
It weighed a mind-blowing 1 lb. and 1 oz.
And it was obviously nearly all water rather than just natural chicken “juice”. In my day I’ve cut up hundreds of whole chickens, both on the MT farm and whole chickens I’ve bought and cut up at home, so I know how much fluid comes from them and it’s nowhere near this much in that amount of chicken.
As I usually do with chicken trimmings and wet packaging I scrunched the whole mess tightly into a plastic bag and put it in my freezer for disposal on trash collection day.
But the next morning I wondered how there could possibly be over a pound of chicken juices at the bottom of a package of chicken that weighed less than five pounds. I thought I must have made a mistake weighing it so I retrieved the absorbers from the freezer, thawed them out, reset my scale to zero and weighed them again.
Nope, no mistake although I did lose nearly an ounce of water during the freezing and thawing out process.
This is the label on the chicken package. If you do the math:
- by weight my package of “chicken” was 21.8% water
- at $1.99 per pound I paid $7.59 for chicken and $2.12 just for water!
So yesterday morning I paid a little visit to the manager of Smith’s with photos in hand. She’s a friend of sorts so I thought she should know about it and I wanted to know if the chicken was already weighed and prepackaged when it came into the store or if it was weighed and packaged in the store. She told me that the chicken came into the store frozen and prepackaged and the store thaws it out and labels it. She also told me that she’s had similar complaints about excess water in the absorption pads of chicken in the past and she encouraged me to file a formal complaint with the USDA.
So yesterday I struggled through the formal complaint process of the USDA, including checking off all their boxes, sending them an explanatory letter and several documentary photos. I don’t expect anything substantial to come of it but for me the process was cathartic and now I know that they’re aware of what my experience was with Heritage Farms chicken.
I have to wonder how many other consumers are paying $2 a pound (that’s $16.68 per gallon), or more, for excess water when they’re buying chicken. It’s theoretically possible that this was a fairly isolated incident, a processing mistake perhaps.
But I’ve had something very similar happen a number of times before so if I were a betting man I know where I’d put my money.
Ron
Notes:
- My math has some obvious variables (the minimal weight of other packaging, the relatively small amount of water that was actually chicken juice, etc.) but it’s close to accurate.
- Here’s the USDA link I used to make my complaint. It’s for reporting problems with meat, poultry and eggs but other food problems can be reported elsewhere on the site.
- A few minutes before I was ready to publish this post I received a response from the USDA. The results were just as I predicted but I’m still glad I made the complaint. Here’s the germane portion of their response:
“After reviewing the information you provided, we searched CCMS for similar
complaints and reviewed inspection records from the facility that produced this
product. We did not identify deficiencies or processing failures at this time, but will
save your complaint and the results of our review to reevaluate the issue should a
similar complaint be reported or additional information becomes available.”
Being single, I buy a lot of packages of lunch meat, ham, etc. that are too much for me to eat before it spoils so I freeze it for later. There isn’t any water or juice when I put it in the bag, however, when it is thawed there is always a considerable amount of water in the bag that I have to drain off. So, I wonder if this is a byproduct of the chicken having been frozen and then thawed for sale. I noticed that the packaging doesn’t say “fresh, never frozen”. Just another possibility.
Larry, I’m confident that’s part of it. But nowhere near 22% water by weight.
Ron, I know this is very late. Quite a few years ago I went to Vancouver College where I took a meat processing course. Our instructor explained about meats that have drained a lot of water into the soaker pad. Shauna said this is mostly due to meat coolers that are not serviced enough where the concentrator is not removing moisture from the inside of the cooler. Meats are moist so Osmosis takes place. Eventually the meat releases excessive moisture into the soaker pad. I know this doesn’t help with having to pay for water that should not have been there.
Interesting, Shirley. But I’d give it more credence if it hadn’t happened so often with me. I guess I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to stuff like this. And 22%% water by weight in the pad just doesn’t make sense to me.
My mind went a little bit of a different direction . . . I’m curious if you had weighed the actual chicken to see if you in fact received 4.88# of chicken . . .
I have no idea how the processing plants work, when the chicken is weighed in the process or if that is done at a local level . .
Nope. By the time I thought of that we’d already eaten half of the chicken. I was actually in the frying process when I weighed the absorption pads.
Ron, you might consider letting Kroger Corporate Connect know about the issue you’ve had as well. I think that Heritage Farms is the rebranding of the old Kroger store value-brand chicken. Not sure if corporate will do anything about it, but the more complaints, the better! I do find it interesting that the “Hatched, Raised and Harvested in USA” label doesn’t include processed in USA — wonder where the chickens go between harvesting and store.
These days, it’s almost impossible to find chicken — or other meats — that hasn’t been injected with “broth”(whatever that means) in a way to increase the weight of the product by at least 15-20%. The claim is that the processing makes the meat tastier and juicier, but I’ve found that it only makes the meat mealy and more expensive. Another way factory farming is more factory than farm these days.
I don’t know if you’ll have the same product issue at WinCo, but they’re usually really good about making things right because the employees have an ownership stake in the store.
Marty, I’m definitely going to try Winco, partly because they’re so close. Their parking lot is usually a mess when I drive by and getting out of there is a potential nightmare considering the way I have to go. But maybe if I go early…
My friend Linda has been complaining about added water and filler in chicken at Smith’s for a long time. I will have to send her this link. I stopped buying Smith’s chicken a few years ago and buy one of the organic chicken breasts. theirs has no pad in the package a very little water. The breasts also do not shrink as much during cooking. My only complaint is sometimes they are very tough.
“My only complaint is sometimes they are very tough”
April, to me that would be a huge deal, especially at the price of organic chicken. I have plenty of old shoes I could fry up instead…
Interesting that your friend Linda has been complaining about the same thing for so long.
lol, I see Linda replied on the facebook link to your blog. I knew she had strong feeling about this.
Oh, it’s THAT Linda. Yup, strong feelings and I don’t blame her.
Hiss and spit.
And now you have me wondering.
We don’t buy prepacked chicken (himself eats it though I don’t) but I have noticed similar things with other meats. I may have to explore further.
And I agree about the obscene size that chickens are bred to these days.
EC, if you do explore further please let me know if you find anything “interesting”.
Ugh. Just ugh.
This is the equivalent of a thumb on the scale. And it is not right.
Assuming it was done deliberately that’s a perfect analogy, Arwen.
My head is about to explode. I’m guessing you know why.
To be honest I’m not sure…
Life in a cage too small
Beak clipped
Fed hormones and antibiotics
Killed, plucked and dismembered
Injected with water
Frozen
Wrapped in plastic
Life and death on the (dis)assembly line.
Got it. Pretty gruesome when you think about it. And we should more often.
Thank you, Lyle. The brutality from start to finish is beyond my ability to understand or ignore. Even organic/farm-raised creatures suffer for our appetites. Which is why I stopped eating animals more than a decade ago.
For a future suggestion to consider. Walmart frozen skinless chicken breasts in a variety of “weight” packaging, in our long experience, does not contain “fluid absorbers” in the packaging. We would also agree with breaded and fried for preference; that in the years we’ve used this product, excellent flavor and tender texture.
Thanks for the tip, Donald. I don’t enjoy shopping at Walmart but I do if I have to.
Glad you took the time to complain. Grrrrrrr.
Thanks, Susan.
What Greta said, “blah, blah, blah”. And yes, it applies to virtually everything to do with politics, power, money and privilege; strange as that should be it also seems that it applies to chicken or tofu or soybean farming. I feel your rage and hers. Guess that is what makes me a Raging Granny. But I’m glad for your blog and my camera because while it won’t heal the sores, attention to the natural world does ease the pain, frustration and rage of living with this kind of greed, deliberate duplicity and indifference to harm. And taking action of any sort, like making that official complaint, is, thankfully, also cathartic. Rock on!
“And taking action of any sort, like making that official complaint, is, thankfully, also cathartic.”
It sure is, “Raging Granny”. Now I’ll be able to move on, even though my complaint to the USDA didn’t do much, if anything. If I hadn’t made the complaint, knowing me I’d have continued to stew about it.
When I first married in 1966, no meat or chicken that I cooked contained water obvious to me. Sometime within the next ten years, I remember being startled at the amount of water involved when I was browning some meat. This only got worse over time. A few years ago, I began eating vegan for health reasons. Now I sometimes soak and cook a pound of dried beans for several hours and end up with about 5 pounds of beans for the one I bought. I didn’t go vegan to outsmart the food industry, but that may have been one result.
I realize that someone from a ranching family may not fully appreciate my comment.
Nancy, I doubt if any of my readers will have any problems with your comment. It’s well known that many folks have chosen to go meatless, for a variety of reasons. Many of them are good ones in my opinion but I just can’t do it, again for a variety of reasons. .
Am a ‘recovering’ vegetarian and have not eaten chicken in over 20 years. It’s ‘foul.’ 🙂 The packaging is clearly a consumer rip-off. Disgusting.
Kathleen, eating chicken or not is of course a personal choice. And yes, I’m very suspicious about all this.
Huh. Interesting observation. I’m glad you filed a complaint with USDA. Sounds like the grocery clerk had heard this complaint before. Grrrr.
Kathryn, yes the manager had heard this complaint before but I can see why her hands are essentially tied. She really wanted me to make the complaint to USDA so that’s part of the reason I did.
My common sense tells me this will be a regular thing to watch out for because packaging [ already an environmental problem.] makes it easy to manipulate price to consumers. Consumer Reports has run articles about the amount of water injected into the chickens and how the industry tries to wrangle how to skirt reporting accurate injection rates, etc. I hope you forwarded your complaint to the Heritage Farm too. We rarely buy meat processed for stores because of the speeding up of the assembly lines much to the detriment of the workers-and chickens. If you can’t use my comment out loud its ok- just FYI. Be well.
Of course I can use your comment “out loud”, Diane. Thanks for making it.
Don’t eat chicken Ron and don’t eat anything GMO. Also did not like the USDA’s answer. Sure looks like these chicken packing companies are jacking up the weight via the added water.
“Sure looks like these chicken packing companies are jacking up the weight via the added water.”
Everett, I suppose it’s possible that this was an isolated incident but it sure makes me suspicious that they’re doing it deliberately. I’ve had it happen before but I never investigated by weighing etc. I should have. And I will again if it happens in the future.
Ron, I have noticed the same thing but not in the quantity you are experiencing. On another note, I looked at the usual $1.99/lb chicken at our local Stop & Shop this week and decided not to buy it because it had gone up to $3.99/lb. I’ll wait for it to go down (if it does).
Gary, I read a CNN article yesterday that said the price of most meat products is expected to go up by about 10-15% just after the first of the year. That increase will be unfortunate but given our present economic and supply chain problems I suspect it’s close to “reasonable”, whatever that is. But dishonest pricing practices really piss me off.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/business/hot-dog-meat-inflation/index.html
THAT is a ridiculous amount of “juice”! 🙁 I’ve noticed that there is a lot of “juice” at times tho not THAT much based on a visual of the absorber “thingy” on the scale. Of course, that isn’t really visible when one is selecting a package either. Guessing folks (including me most of the time) just don’t pay THAT much attention – probably why minimal to no complaints. 😉 Bad enough that prices are plenty high to begin with… 🙁
Rarely do Smith’s for chicken mainly due to them not being convenient. Albertson’s seems to do a pretty good job on all of it. Haven’t noticed if they have breasts in the fresh cabinet – doubt it and they’re probably boneless/skinless jobbies. Glad you took the time to file the complaint.
The size of chicken breasts these days IS obscene – almost think “turkey” and, often, they are pretty tasteless.
“The size of chicken breasts these days IS obscene”
I agree, Judy and “obscene” is a good way to put it.
I hate that they’re so huge but most chickens are now deliberately bred that way. And when you cut them in two to fry them up they fall apart very easily.
After many disappointing experiences, I have not bought chicken at Smith’s for years. I find that the chicken at Winco is much much better.
Interesting post, Ronnie!
That’s interesting to know, Sue. There’s a Winco very close to me, even closer than Smith’s, but I’ve only been there once – a few days after they opened just to check them out. I’ll have to give them a try.
I have been shopping more and more at Winco. The prices are lower than anywhere else and the quality is really great. Just to know in advance, they only accept cash or debit cards, not credit cards. And they do not hire baggers.
Thanks. I wondered about stuff like that.