Perdue Farms can't shed scarlet letter

Image via Wikipedia

It takes a tough consumer to see through Perdue's claims.

Perdue Farms has a new TV ad campaign that tries to convince consumers its chickens are "better," but the spots are silent on its use of antibiotics to make them grow quickly and keep them healthy in crowded conditions.


I saw one of the ads this morning on the TV mounted on my exercise bicycle at the gym, and antibiotics were never mentioned. 


They earn Perdue the scarlet letter "A."


I once saw a PBS documentary that showed a chicken growing so big on antibiotics, it could not stand and constantly fell over in a crowded chicken house.


The ads claim Perdue gives its chicken an all-vegetarian feed, with no added animal by-products, and never administers "steroids or hormones."


But the government bars the use of steroids and hormones, so that claim is meaningless.


Here is a story in the Huffington Post on the new campaign.


Perdue tries to improve perception of chicken


Most supermarkets, including ShopRite and Stop & Shop, carry fresh chicken raised without antibiotics.

Chicken taste test: Murray's v. Readington Farms

Opening day at Fairway Market in Paramus. Image via Wikipedia

Since Fairway Market opened in Paramus in March, I have been buying and preparing Murray's free-roaming, drug-free, bone-in chicken at home instead of ShopRite's Readington Farms brand, which is also antibiotic-free and fed an all-vegetable diet. Murray's is priced a bit higher.

I usually get leg quarters and roast them with cinnamon and allspice, serving the pieces with rice or pasta cooked in the chicken fat and chicken broth. 


Or I bread the pieces in chili spices before baking them. My wife prepares jerk chicken wings or legs or chicken in a brown sauce. 

The other day, she said she doesn't like Murray's chicken as much as the Readington Farms poultry.

So now I'm buying Readington Farms again and will conduct a side-by-side-comparison sometime in the future. 


Last night, we had Readington Farms wings and leg quarters coated in chili spices (you take breadcrumbs, combine them with the spices and salt in Wick Fowler's 2-Alarm Chili Kit, except for the masa flour, and add sesame seeds and any other spices you might want, then wet the chicken before breading). 

I make a lot of the spicy breading at one time and keep it in the fridge.

Besides tasting better and being better for you than ordinary supermarket chicken like Perdue, drug-free chicken cooks faster.

--VICTOR E. SASSON