Hi- Whole Foods has their whole organic chicken on sale tomorrow 2/20, for only $1.99 a pound. Has anybody had their organic chicken? Do you like it? Thanks, Nancy

NFriday wrote:Hi- Whole Foods has their whole organic chicken on sale tomorrow 2/20, for only $1.99 a pound. Has anybody had their organic chicken? Do you like it? Thanks, Nancy

Tastes like chicken.

We get our chickens fresh from a local very small supplier, they process themselves and the chickens cool in a horse-trough with running well water. We freeze whole chickens for roasting and cut up a number of them for parts and freeze.
They have no retained moisture when inspected or when cooking. The joints are significantly stronger than a factory chicken.
Supermarket birds have so much water that they look wrinkled as you do when in the water for a long time. When searing they retain a lot of water. Ugh!
Smart chickens have less water but are not significantly different in taste than a Factory chicken such as Perdue.
The closest I have found to our local supplier would be John's Live Poultry.
I m very suspicious of the terms, Organic, Free Range and the like.-Dick

Hi- Over at mashupmom a few days ago, I posted that I would be leery of Coleman organic chicken, being truly organic. They were taken over a few years ago by Perdue. Somebody said she had been buying her whole organic chicken at Costco for $1.99 which she was not crazy about, and wanted to know if I had any suggestions on what to buy. I said that Whole Foods had good organic chicken, and Bell and Evans had good chicken, but it was not organic. Rachael at mashupmom posted an article from Bloomberg that claimed that because of the popularity of sustainable chicken, the big time players such as Perdue have gotten in the game, and Whole Foods now buys some of their chicken from Perdue. I know they sell Perdue Harvestland at Jewel. Here is a link to the article.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... l-any-more

That is all I buy is sustainable chicken, and I think Whole Foods air chilled chicken is good, but according to the article Whole Foods is not the only place to get sustainable chicken. and their chicken might come from the same people who supply Walmart.

BTW- The cornucopia Institute is trying to compile a scorecard for organic meat like they do for eggs and dairy, and they are asking people to let them know what organic meat the stores in your area carry. Thanks, Nancy

My understanding of these Organizations that supply 'Organic' Certification, is that all you have to do as a supplier is to join and sign a piece (Certify) of paper saying you raise whatever to thier Organic Standards. These Organizations never Audit the Suppliers.
As to who supplies what to whom with what Certifications, I doubt that one can find any objective evidence to support any claims.
Once a market segment shows any appreciable size, you can rest assured that the Big Producers will want a share and eventually will dominate. Most likely by purchasing the smaller producer and then producing to reduced Standards that they can get by with.-Richard

budrichard wrote:My understanding of these Organizations that supply 'Organic' Certification, is that all you have to do as a supplier is to join and sign a piece (Certify) of paper saying you raise whatever to thier Organic Standards. These Organizations never Audit the Suppliers.

Absolutely 100% incorrect. I work in the food industry (albeit industrial-level fruit and veg, not consumer-level meat) and our Organic certification is subject to multiple on-site audits per year. We get at least 1 on-site audit from our certifying agency every year, plus additional audits performed by customers' certifying agencies. Full traceability is an integral part of these audits. I suppose there could be lesser standards out there but not in my world.

=R=

Good to know.
I'm a Trained Auditor but so far only for Nuclear Power.
I certainly would like to review Audit Records for a third party impartial opinion.
There is at least one article where an independent auditor tries to verify Certification on-site but runs into road blocks by the various agencies and suppliers being Certified.
When I see in the marketplace the same product from the same supplier/grower offered as both Organic and non-Organic, I wonder how the two product streams are kept separate?
-Richard

budrichard wrote:Good to know.
I'm a Trained Auditor but so far only for Nuclear Power.
I certainly would like to review Audit Records for a third party impartial opinion.
There is at least one article where an independent auditor tries to verify Certification on-site but runs into road blocks by the various agencies and suppliers being Certified.
When I see in the marketplace the same product from the same supplier/grower offered as both Organic and non-Organic, I wonder how the two product streams are kept separate?
-Richard

The same way any other streams are kept separate. Either separate production lines or separate facilities. Can also be separate production runs (although that's easier for something other than meat production).

spinynorman99 wrote:

budrichard wrote:Good to know.
I'm a Trained Auditor but so far only for Nuclear Power.
I certainly would like to review Audit Records for a third party impartial opinion.
There is at least one article where an independent auditor tries to verify Certification on-site but runs into road blocks by the various agencies and suppliers being Certified.
When I see in the marketplace the same product from the same supplier/grower offered as both Organic and non-Organic, I wonder how the two product streams are kept separate?
-Richard

The same way any other streams are kept separate. Either separate production lines or separate facilities. Can also be separate production runs (although that's easier for something other than meat production*).

Many Kosher products are produced at facilities that also produce non-certified products. They do complete Kosher cleaning and preparation and then do the required volume of Kosher production before they return to producing their other products.

spinynorman99 wrote:

spinynorman99 wrote:

budrichard wrote:Good to know.
I'm a Trained Auditor but so far only for Nuclear Power.
I certainly would like to review Audit Records for a third party impartial opinion.
There is at least one article where an independent auditor tries to verify Certification on-site but runs into road blocks by the various agencies and suppliers being Certified.
When I see in the marketplace the same product from the same supplier/grower offered as both Organic and non-Organic, I wonder how the two product streams are kept separate?
-Richard

The same way any other streams are kept separate. Either separate production lines or separate facilities. Can also be separate production runs (although that's easier for something other than meat production*).

*Many Kosher products are produced at facilities that also produce non-certified products. They do complete Kosher cleaning and preparation and then do the required volume of Kosher production before they return to producing their other products. On the flip side, some Kosher meat producers also do non-kosher processing (in a separate production facility) for the animal parts that can't be certified.