Packers use carbon monoxide to stabilize the color of meat
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two of the biggest U.S. meat processors on Tuesday defended a packaging technique designed to keep meat looking fresh at grocery stores even as U.S. lawmakers criticized it as unsafe and misleading.
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Packers use carbon monoxide to stabilize the color of meat, but some Democrats said the process misleads consumers by making the products look safer than they really are, and puts the public at risk of eating spoiled meat.
Rep. Bart Stupak, Michigan Democrat and chairman of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, called the practice deceptive and "a potential health threat," and accused U.S. regulators of "turning a blind eye" toward health dangers.
I wonder if the vacuum seal bags would do as good a job without any chemicals?
They do in my house.
I store fresh and keep frozen meat, poultry, seafood, sauces and cheese for much longer than I would care to admit.
I have seen no sign of spoilage in any of them.
All of this with vacuum sealer.
What a great product.
I saw this story on the news. Part of it mentioned that people don't read the expiration dates or labels. They just do a visual of the meat and, if it looks fresh, they buy it.
They even did a test with 'old' meat to see what people would do and they picked it up to buy because 'it looked fresh.'
Looks are deceiving, and the lesson is read the labels.
True. Meat, Dairy and eggs I ALWAYS double check. And I fish around towards the back to see if I can find newer dates hid back there.
Yup, I do this too. I've noticed that my grocery store shoves the newer dates to the back so that they can get rid of the stuff that is going to expire the quickest, especially with items such as yogurt and sour cream. Since it's just me and my husband in my household, we usually go through dairy products a lot slower than a household with a few children in it. I've got to have the stuff that lasts the longest, or else I'd be wasting an awful lot of groceries.
Thanks to my mother, I'm very careful about reading labels and I agree that this is the most important thing. I was pleased to read in this article that Target would like to have warning labels put on the packaging. We have a Super Target here that has a very impressive grocery store and I'm becoming a bigger fan of theirs every day. I admit that I'm a bit of a grocery store snob, but I don't mind shopping at Target now and then.
They do for me too Clove. I agree it's one of the best purchases I ever made.
It would seem a grocery chain could get an even more sophisticated system to do it than our home systems.
Vac-packs have been in the back rooms for some thirty years. Retail cases are full of the stuff these days. But it doesn't so well with red meat, the lack of oxygen turns it brown or dark.
Believe me, I would never buy the stuff, just out of principal! But it does reduce the cost to the consumer. Straight from the packer to the shelf.
Want to know what's in the cutting room at a Walmart? Nothing, no grinder, no saw, nothing. Oh, and no meat cutter...they cut him out.
Rainlover 
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