Tonight’s PBS Frontline is about commercial chicken production and food born pathogens…watch if you dare I suppose.
9:00 Central
Thanks Craig! I saw this just in time to set the DVR. I eat a lot of chicken…
I watched a similar show some years ago, maybe on 60 Minutes. What still sticks in my mind is the phrase “fecal soup” to describe the water trough/bath that the plucked and disemboweled carcasses are dunked in prior to further processing. Gaak! Put me off chicken for years.
There are several producers using air chilled methods vs. the chlorine bath saline soak. I only buy these and they are a huge improvement. Mary’s chicken in SoCal is good stuff. There is a producer in Iowa called smart chicken that is doing the same thing. About 2x cost, but, when you are buying whole roasters I figure you are well ahead of the cost game anyway.
I watched the PBS show last night - right before dinner! My takeaway was to buy nothing but Mary’s air-chilled product from now on, cost be damned!
I eat a lot of chicken. I have purchased Mary’s on occasion in the past but that is going to change…
BUY empire (Kosher) chicken as they brined, no antibiotics etc,etc.
Higher priced but an excellent product and very tasty.
Mary’s Air Chilled Chickens
I watched that old chicken exposé too, and I too was off chicken for a long time. But I came back.
Was reading a chipotle restaurant press release recently and took from it that they really can’t abide industrial pork, and so they won’t always have pork. Some other stuff, they don’t get as crazy, but the pork industry sucks. And it has me thinking, I need a better pork source.
And now, I’ll probably watch this and be off cheap chicken again. Food is gonna get pricey.
Is the Rocky brand any better? I know I can get air chilled at Whole Foods.
Smart Chicken and Bell & Evans (at least those marked as such-it has been a while since I have seen their program) are two other air chilled chickens.
JD