Some deep discounts at Fairway Market

The sale circular for Fairway Market in Paramus arrived with the paper today. Deep cuts on prices for Tropicana orange juice and Campari tomatoes take effect Friday and run through Oct. 29.

For the first time, the circular carries a coupon good for $10 off a purchase of $75 before tax, compared with Fairway's previous $10-off-$100-coupon in ValPak mailings. This new coupon may indicate the New York-based chain is having trouble attracting shoppers to its store in the dowdy Fashion Center mall on Route 17. The rent must have been low there for Fairway to ignore Bergen Town Center, where Whole Foods Market and Target (with a full grocery) opened new stores.

Fairway's sale price on Tropicana is $1.79, compared with $1.88 recently at ShopRite. Three 1-pound packages of Campari greenhouse tomatoes are $5, an especially good deal if these are the ones grown without herbicide. Check the label before you buy. Previously, Fairway sold a package for $2.99 or two for $5 on sale.

The great Spanish Manchego sheep's milk cheese is $8.99 a pound -- $4 off -- but that's about what you would pay at Costco. Murray's free-roaming, drug-free chicken isn't on sale.

Fairway makes a big deal over its USDA Prime shell steaks for $8.99 a pound, but doesn't tell you prime only means it is fattier than Choice and Select, the other two grades the federal government uses to classify beef. It also doesn't tell you the animal probably got fat by being confined to a feeding pen, where it received antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products to speed it to the slaughterhouse.

We can only hope the steaks didn't come from a "downer," a sick animal that collapses at the door, but is nevertheless dragged to its death and dismemberment. Bon apetit.