Healthy safe chicken meat

Completely away from gardening but you lot seem sensible and practical, so what's your take on this?

With recent scares and scandals regarding chicken it has made me give up buying and eating all but free range whole chickens. I'm referring to the recent reports of poor hygiene in chicken processing plants, relabeling of returned unsold chicken portions to be resold and new more recent sell by dates fixed to the packaging, which actually means that some chicken has a newer date on the repackaging than it did on it's original packaging. I like eating chicken: there are so many good recipes and ways of cooking it. The problem seems to be with cut up chickens, packs of legs or breasts or whatever, which Is why we've only been buying whole chickens since press attention was drawn to this problem last summer. And I have to say that it's paid off; gone are unexplained stomach aches and diarrhea.

But as I say, there are many good recipes for chicken pieces, which we like and short of butchering chickens (which I don't want to do) how can one source safe chicken pieces? With summer coming I would like to find a source of safe chicken pieces as we like BBQs. Does anyone know which supermarkets avoid the processing plants named during the bad practice reports? How do you source the chicken you buy?

 

All meats will go through some sort of processing plant even the meats though your butcher
whole chicken will go through the same proccesing plant as the chicken wings and legs

It's all about cutting corners, some do some don't

We buy whole chickens and cook it well

It's also not meats that have people cutting corner, i've worked with grain for a long time and seen lots of iffy things

 

I think in general the meat trade is pretty iffy, remember the horse meat scandal a few years ago.

Some years back we had staff agency people working for the company I was working at at the time, they said they preferred working in dust and noise like I do, to when they get sent to work in the local pie factory, apparently some of them used be ill after spending a day there.

Dont think you will get ill, if you cook the shite, (I mean meat), properly, go cooking it like the TV chefs and be prepared for a week in smallest room.

 

Could you ask the local butcher (if you have one) where s/he sourced the meat? Or go direct to a local farm.. might mean you plucking and preparing it though but not always the case. I get my Xmas meat direct from a farm down the road and it is already prepared by them. Any other time of the year it either m&s or asdas finest.. which is not that fine.

On a slightly different note..I'd seriously suggest avoiding any Tesco butcher's counter for meat unless it's still in its original unopened packaging from the fridge behind or from backstock, which has a "sell by" on it. Unfortunatley, when I worked on the deli counter I had to turn a co-worker in.. thought she'd do Tesco a good deed by altering dates on whole chickens (and god knows what else) just to get above the waste target. Grim.

 

Your on about chicken and meats but what about pie factories/sausages/porkpies etc...my sister used to work in a unit where these was done and she actually saw the meat dropped and throwed back in with the meat and because she was funny in that manner she asked to work the ovens with the men.

It goes on a lot unless it's exposed

 

We need more people to snitch on what's going on and the people with the power to do something about it

 

Now that's a first

 

It isn't just meat which can be pretty "iffy".I used to be involved with the production of farmed salmon. Just as well the general public didn't see what went on,farmed salmon healthy?hmm let's put it this way I never eat it!
Daughter regularly visits abattoirs to collect meat then transporting it to meat processing plants or the likes of Smithfield market.
Unfortunately @Redwing a different supermarket label doesn't mean the product you are buying is necessarily different from another outlet. Meat packaged for a German supermarket is from the same source as that for M&S often. Only difference is you'll probably pay more in M&S! I saw years ago boil in the bag kippers being packaged on a production line.The line was stopped to change the packaging labels from 1 retailer to a very upmarket 1. The line started up again. I asked if there was any difference of the quality of kippers being used for the upmarket retailer, answer no but the butter included was a better brand!

 

@silu Although there may be quite a few that deny that such a thing happens, I can confirm from own experience that to be true. Not only in the packaging of kippers as per your example, but in many areas of the food packaging industry. Like you, I've seen it with my own eyes!

 

I think this is part of the problem, how many small chicken producers kill and sell their own chickens? Everything is done on such an enormous scale that the care seems to have gone from the production line. Also I don’t want to pluck and butcher.

Good point about using your nose. What I am really complaining about is the way they relabelled the use by dates to make it appear fresher than it actually is, giving it a shorter shelf life so could be off when you come to cook it. The irony is that these huge plants were set up to make food safer but they seem to be doing the opposite. Sad to me that the processors are ruining food in some cases.

I have cut up whole chickens myself but don’t like doing it. What I now do with a whole chicken is cut off the legs and thighs and freeze them for another day, then roast the chicken without the legs and thighs. It’s not always ideal though.

 

Interesting!

I know, but my point really was the relabling of older chicken pieces mixed with newer fresher pieces with a more recent date which is completely wrong and dangerous. I guess I’m calling for more thorough inspections to eliminate this bad practice.

 

I absolutely agree @Redwing but like in so many things people are open to turning a blind eye if the price is right. It happens a great deal at abattoirs evidently. I have seen joints of meat in a supermarket which were reduced as close to their sell by date, being minced up and repackaged with a sell by date 6 days later! I only spotted this as was going to buy 1 of the reduced joints changed my mind and left it, changed my mind again and went back to find them not there but being reprocessed.
However as Shiney has said we human beings are pretty tough and when you consider what food hygiene or lack of it was like many years ago, most of our food is fairly safe. What I don't like and fish farming (think battery chicken farming also) struggles with is the use of antibiotics. By the use of antibiotics in animal/fish production I am not unconvinced we are less protected by their beneficial effects as much as we used to be. Farming fish is very difficult to do without the use of all sorts of chemicals to keep the fish healthy. After all they are living in each others excrement, not to put a finer point on things! and if 1 fish gets some disease, sure as "eggs is eggs" without chemical intervention the whole cage of fish will be affected. Add on the considerable problem of fish lice which the salmon industry throughout the world is battling with and I can see that the rules on the usage of various chemicals being relaxed.
Shiney is also correct about us using the senses we were born with but often seem to forget about them. What do most animals do before they eat something? sniff the food to ensure it is ok for them to eat.
I used to do food testing under ultraviolet lights as these light stop you seeing what the food looks like. If you were given some green moldy bread would you eat it? Under ultraviolet light that sense is removed so you are more reliant on your nose. Your taste buds in your mouth and on your tongue? are the last line of defense after you have looked at the food and smelt it.
You of course will get the complete moron who asks if something is still ok to eat when obviously it isn't .Had 1 or 2 folk asking if fish I had sent them was still ok to eat when it's been held up in the post for weeks, was honking and had grey hairy mould on it plus a clear use by date attached to the package. Oh was I tempted to say it would be absolutely fine