Costco Wholesale is slowly coming around

The food court at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

I shop for food weekly at Costco. I love the quality of most items and the low prices, but when I want drug-free chicken, preservative-free cold cuts or grass-fed beef, I have to go elsewhere.

Costco has slowly-- too slowly, in my opinion -- added organic food and antibiotic-free poultry and meat, but most of the food it sells is grown or raised conventionally.

Today, I bought wild coho salmon fillet from Alaska, Hans' drug- and preservative-free chicken meatballs and sausage, organic salad mix, herbicide-free tomatoes and frozen organic mixed vegetables. 

But there was a deli full of preserved cold cuts and a barnyard full of Perdue and other brands of chicken raised on antibiotics (only the Coleman boneless-and-skinless thighs are organic.)

The Costco rotisserie chicken is dreadful -- a conventional chicken with many added flavors. And except for the drug-free Australian lamb and organic ground beef, the vast expanse of beef and pork should be ignored.

Now, The Costco Connection magazine for October 2009 is heralding the addition of a few more naturally raised or organic meat, poultry and pork items, in stores and at Costco.com, the mail-order arm.

From mid-November, stores will offer an antibiotic-free, vegetarian-fed Kirkland smoked, bone-in ham.  

By mail order, you will be able to buy organic rib roasts and frozen turkeys, and they'll be glatt kosher no less.