The Spoiled Meat Trick (Slate)

Slate wrote:Shoppers often choose meat out of the grocery case based on how fresh it looks, but meatpackers have started packaging fresh meat in a "modified atmosphere" that masks telltale discoloration and decomposition of days-old meat. The process involves pumping oxygen out of and carbon monoxide into an airtight container. The deception has occasioned numerous protests from consumer groups.

http://www.slate.com/id/2170633/entry/2170634/

-ramon

Another reason to shop at Paulina Market, my friends.

Hi,

Interesting how a preservation method can be described as deception.

Many people buy bags of salad greens or the mixed greens in the plastic tub at Costco. Those lettuces stay pretty fresh when still packaged. All of these have had the oxygen replaced with another gas to slow decomposition. Once they are opened, then the natural decay returns at a normal pace.

Glass half full, glass half empty: it is all how you choose to perceive the information.

Regards,

This sounds a lot like how old, cheap tuna is treated with CO to keep it a deep red and "fresh looking".

I don't think of this as a preservation technique. I'm not sure that it really preserves much but the color. Frankly, I think of preservation techniques as things that preserve the quality and freshness, not the appearance.

This, to me, is like gassing oranges with ethylene to make them bright orange but not affect the ripeness at all, except more insidious, since one tricks the consumer into buying unripe fruit, and the other tricks the consumer into buying and eating spoiled or close-to-spoiled meat.

This might be of interest:

December 20, 2004

Cathy2 wrote:I bought cryovac 'Choice' rib roast from Costco at $5.65 per pound. From talking to various butchers there, I learned the smaller rib roasts (at a dollar or more per pound) began as the larger cryovac roasts.

This year, principally due to Gary's influence, I've begun to favor buying cryovac meat over meat in the disposable tray wrapped with plastic. They cryovac meat holds longer and often the food on the tray originated from a cryovac pack.

Cathy2, December 13, 2004 wrote:Today, I was checking out rib roasts for Christmas and noticed the cryovac label indicated it expired today. I inquired with the butcher what do they do with expiring meat. I learned they usually pull the cryovac meat one day before it expires. They break open the pack, then cut it up into smaller roasts or ribeye steaks, where they are laid out for 3 days. If not sold by day 3, they will then grind this meat into hamburger.

He did indicate I could buy the cryovac rib roast and despite the expiration being today, it would be still good for another 2 weeks.

In the case of the lettuce though, spoilage isn't being disguised, as it is with the meat, it's being retarded. That's a signficant distinction, I think.

Meat starts out purplish, then when exposed to air turns red and then grayish , all while remaining perfectly safe to eat. CO2 does not add more color to the meat; it just preserves the color like lemon juice prevents apple slices from turning brown from oxidation. It also doesn't mask spoilage. In fact, CO2 modified atmosphere storage is why we can eat a lot of produce months after harvest season. We wouldn't have apples or pears year round without this technology.

We're talking about carbon monoxide (CO) when it comes to meat, not CO2, in most cases.

Here's another article at the NY Times:

Which Cut Is Older? (It's a Trick Question)

Randy Huffman of the American Meat Institute Foundation, an industry group, said, "The primary benefit in providing this product to consumers is the red color they have grown to expect."

And this:

Some food scientists who approve of other forms of modified atmosphere packaging as a way of extending a product's life say this form of it can be unsafe. Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, says one study found that when meat in modified packages that included carbon monoxide was stored at 10 degrees above the proper temperature, salmonella grew more easily.

And at the washington post: FDA is Urged to Ban Carbon-Monoxide-Treated Meat

They note that the European Union has banned the use of carbon monoxide as a color stabilizer in meat and fish. A December 2001 report from the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food concluded that the gas (whose chemical abbreviation is "CO") did not pose a risk as long as food was kept cold enough during storage and transport to prevent microbial growth. But should the meat become inadvertently warmer at some point, it warned, "the presence of CO may mask visual evidence of spoilage."

Oops. I meant to type CO in my previous post. Despite the outcry, I think the media has yet to report one case or lawsuit about somebody becoming sick from eating spoiled meat that was "hidden" by CO treatment.

My point is that it's not a preservation technique in the sense that it keeps the meat fresher. It's a color fixative or color additive.

It is used to increase sales of meat, and especially older meat that would otherwise be unappetizingly brown.

I thought that meat was legally dyed to maintain an artificial bright red hue that people have come to believe bespeaks actual freshness. Is this not so? If it is so, doesn't the dye make the gassing uneccessary? (And then there's the pink lighting in the display cases.)

Does anyone know if the process is the same with fish?

Re: tuna, JesteinF is right about the CO used to maintain that bright pink-red of frozen-vac-packed tuna. Checkout the label sometime - it's often remarked, if not, you'll see that it's mentioned that "wood smoke" has been used to preserve color (just another way to say that carbon monoxide was used).

Many sushi places in town use that bright pink-red tuna which has been treated w/ CO - horrible taste/practice - same with ranched blue-fin and farm-raised Salmon.