How low can they go on beef prices?

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Three supermarket circulars came with the newspaper this morning, offering beef for $1.47 to $5.99 a pound.


The A&P flier declares: "We will not be undersold!" USDA choice, boneless top round London broil is on sale for $1.47 a pound. Choice is one of the three grades U.S. agricultural officials assign to beef: prime, choice and select.



The Pathmark circular offers USDA choice New York strip steak for $4.99 a pound ("save up to $5 a pound").


At Fairway Market in Paramus, "whole, fully trimmed beef" for filet mignon is on sale for $5.99 a pound, but there is no indication whether this meat was raised in the U.S. or what grade it might be. Fairway usually features USDA prime beef in its circulars (prime has the most fat or marbling), but the absence of that phrase in today's circular might prompt you to ask questions at the store.


Only the Pathmark flier says anything about how the beef was raised. Its steaks are "Western grain fed." You can assume the beef sold by the three stores was raised conventionally with antibiotics, growth hormones and animal byproducts.


Contrast these sales with the $3.99 to $4.99 a pound charged by ShopRite  when it has a sale on free-range, grass-fed beef  from Australia. In March, A&P and Pathmark had Australian leg of lamb on sale for $1.99 a pound -- the lowest I had ever seen.

Shrill sales circular from Fairway Market

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New York-based Fairway Market has been pushing U.S. prime beef since it opened a store in Paramus this year, but its latest sales circular has a shrill tone and the text is full of exclamation marks. I guess all of this is designed to distract shoppers from knowing how the cattle were raised.

"This is what we're talking about!" and "Great food! Great prices! Only at Fairway!" are two of the large-type sentences displayed around a seasoned USDA prime porterhouse steak with grill marks, on sale Jan. 1-7 for $8.99 a pound. 

Prime is the top grade assigned to beef by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (choice and select are the other grades) and signifies that this meat has the highest fat content.

But that's it. Prime can be raised conventionally, with growth hormones, antibiotics and animal by-products -- bits of dead animals -- in the feed. The circular is silent on how the cattle were raised. 

The ad text says, "This is serious steakhouse steak! This ain't no supermarket steak! Could there be anything more glorious on the face of the Earth! We think not." 

Well, little, old me thinks so. The cattle could be free range, rather than being confined in enormous, manure-filled feed lots (the animals are usually covered in manure when they enter, or are dragged, into the slaughterhouse, and feces often gets into ground beef). They could be grass fed, instead of being pumped full of grain, which can make them sick, and animal byproducts could be banned from their feed.

I'm sure this prime beef tastes good and $8.99 a pound is a great price, but you can find grass-fed beef on sale at Whole Foods Market, also in Paramus, for around $9.99 a pound. What do the arrogant New York owners of Fairway have to say about that?

How safe is that supermarket chicken?

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The latest issue of Consumers Reports (January 2010) discloses results of tests on supermarket broiler chickens  for salmonella and/or campylobacter, the leading bacterial causes of foodborne illnesses. This is a long, informative article, complete with photos, charts and graphs. The headlines:

How safe is that chicken?
Most tested broilers were contaminated

Nature's Promise poultry from Stop & Shop is included, but two brands of chicken available in North Jersey are conspicuous by their absence: Readington Farms' antibiotic-free birds from Shop Rite and Murray's free-roaming chickens from Fairway Market in Paramus.  

One definition caught my eye. When the label says no antibiotics are administered, "don't assume this was verified unless you also see the label 'USDA organic.'" But the article doesn't name brands that do this. It does urge consumers to cook chicken to at least 165 degrees. We eat mostly dark meat and can cook it to 170 degrees or 180 degrees without affecting moistness.

Is there a difference between broilers and fryers? Can you broil a fryer and vice versa? Consumer Reports doesn't say.

The tests found the cleanest name-brand chicken to be Perdue, but the article doesn't discuss the use of antibiotics and possibly animal by-products to raise those chickens, two additives that are harmful to humans. Click on the link below to read the entire article:


http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/january/food/chicken-safety/overview/chicken-safety-ov.htm