Just bought a whole chicken that was bruised and purple

[eugenep]

I didn't see the a section for "moralizing" etc. here on egullet so please excuse me if I posted on the wrong section and feel free to move this thread to the right section. 

 

So yes. I bought a chicken from Perdue that was bruised and purple. I cut off the purple and red sections (most of it) and just took it apart and salted it. 

 

I read in Modernist Cuisine that purple meat is called "cutter meat" in the meat industry and that's because the animal's PH level changed before slaughter owing to fear, anxiety or pain. Cutter meat is usually sold at a lower price and the purple color can change if you alter it's PH.

 

But cutter meat is something you want to avoid because the muscles are more tense and tougher to chew owing to the adrenaline boost the animal experiences from suffering. 

 

Ummm...my chicken was purple and red all over in it's flesh because it got the sh*t kicked out of it before it was slaughtered most likely. So the bruises showed up. 

 

I didn't want to waste the meat so I just salted and ate some of it for dinner with my girlfriend. But the thought of that disgusting bruised meat bothered me. 

 

I didn't know if I should write to Perdue and ask for a refund or something. 

 

My thoughts are: Have you ever gotten crappy cutter meat and did you complain about it to Perdue or otherwise? It's purple meat usually. But, as in my chicken case, the meat was bruised and red and purple. Like..did you do anything about it....or ask for a discount or refund? 

 

It kinda bothers me (of course) that the chicken got it's a$$ kicked before slaughter on an ethical level and I do kinda feel guilty and think about it at like past 1am at night (for being complicit because I paid for it and so paid for it's death in a brutal way). I guess I'll try to complain to Perdue but if you know of any other means.... please let me know. 

[gfweb]

Why did you buy it if it was all battered?

[liuzhou]

23 minutes ago, gfweb said:

Why did you buy it if it was all battered?

 

My thoughts exactly.

[Kerry Beal]

Maybe it was a silkie.

[liuzhou]

51 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Maybe it was a silkie.

 

I've never seen a purple silkie. Only black. And not bruised.

 

It would have helped if the OP had included a photo.

 

 

 

[pastrygirl]

7 hours ago, eugenep said:

the thought of that disgusting bruised meat bothered me. 

 

Was the meat bad in taste or texture after cooking?  If you hadn’t seen it raw, would you have known?  

 

The time to get your money back would have been before cooking. (Depending on store policy of course). But definitely write or call Perdue and see what they say. 

[lindag]

8 hours ago, eugenep said:

 

 

It kinda bothers me (of course) that the chicken got it's a$$ kicked before slaughter on an ethical level and I do kinda feel guilty and think about it at like past 1am at night (for being complicit because I paid for it and so paid for it's death in a brutal way). I guess I'll try to complain to Perdue but if you know of any other means.... please let me know. 

On a PETA level that would bother me very much too.  You could complain to Purdue, for what it's be worth.

[Anna N]

 I do not understand this at all unless you are saying that you were unaware of the condition of the chicken before you opened it at home. If you bought it knowing how badly damaged it was then  it’s hard to understand the rest of your complaint. 

If you thought it was a perfectly good chicken until you opened it at home and discovered its defects then your best course of action would have been to wrap it up and stick it back in your refrigerator or your freezer and return it to the store as quickly as possible and ask for your money back. 

 I suspect your options are limited now.   Most stores are responsive to customer complaints and will likely refund your money just on your say so alone.

As for whether you could pursue anything about the treatment of the chicken is very hard to guess.  Proving that it was ill treated is probably beyond your scope of expertise. At the moment that is an assumption on your part and however valid that assumption might appear that’s all it is—an assumption. 

[weinoo]

Aren't all battery chickens mistreated at some point in their lives?

 

Don't buy Perdue!

[Kerry Beal]

Indeed - the chicken may have suffered from a bleeding disorder.

 

 

[HungryChris]

I have encountered Perdue chickens with broken bones a few too many times and I stopped buying them.

HC

[FeChef]

Maybe the new guy working at purdue working on the chicken tenderloin line thought thats how you make chicken tenders.

[eugenep]

Oh. I didn't see the bruises but it was pointed out to me in by someone in the grocery store. I thought they were talking about "bruised" as in ragged old chicken that wan't fresh like bruised vegetables. I looked to see if there was any water on the tray (indicating chicken was sitting in it tray for a while) there was none and the date was 11/7/18 for expiration so it looked fresh enough. 

 

The purple and red parts were mostly in the wings and I missed it until I took it out of the packaging. 

 

The only other time I ate cutter meat was when there was as skirt steak for sale at $8.99 a pound. What a deal! It's usually $13.99 or so so I bought it and seared it etc. The inside was dark purple and I thought it was because the meat was so fresh it didn't have time to oxidize and change color from purple to red. I googled it and found out otherwise and remembered that stuff I read in Modernist Cuisine. 

 

I read that cutter meat is sort of a normal thing in the meat industry and is sold at a discount (hence the price I got). It's hard to sell to consumers so it's supposed to be sold to government lunch programs etc. (from stuff I read online). Here is one link https://meat.tamu.edu/2013/01/22/dark-cutting-beef/ 

 

The highest price I paid for a chicken was the Red Bro chicken at $50 at about $10 a pound for whole. It was grown in upstate NY. A Manhattan lawyer and his wife owned it but they live in NYC. It was good chicken and does taste different from standard supermarket chicken. It was buttery and had this depth of flavor...like it tasted good and felt healthy at the same time (that's the only words I could explain the taste). But for $35 a week for a 3.5 lb chicken normally, I think it's way to pricey. So thank god for Perdue. 

 

I emailed Perdue and told them that I'm grateful for their super low affordable prices. I think I spent like $4.50 (not the $50 I paid for Red Bro) for this chicken so I don't care about a refund but I just wanted to grouse about it in a polite way and ask them for a "refund" owing to the flesh and processing.

 

Just my 2cents. I might throw away the remaining parts.

 

I salted the two thighs and drums sticks, added herb butter, and put them on a bed of Brussels sprouts in a 450 degree oven. 

 

The salt was about 4 hours in the fridge 1 hour on the table and didn't penetrate the meat that deeply. It wasn't tough meat insofar as I could tell and no big difference in taste experience. 

 

Ummm...the red bro does taste different than standard Perdue...but it's like this depth of flavor and yummy goodness in the protein that Perdue lacks. But at $10 a pound - fergetaboutit 

Edited November 4, 2018 by eugenep (log)

[weinoo]

If more people bought Red Bro, or other similar breeds/properly raised birds, the price would come down, as more producers focus on that.

 

Another reason for your red bird:

 

Quote

Chickens which are sold as broiler/fryers typically are slaughtered between 6 to 8 weeks of age. Outwardly they appear fully mature, but their bones haven`t completely calcified. As a result, the bone mass is very porous. Deeply colored pigment from the bone marrow migrates to the surface and often is visible along the bone and the meat that is immediately attached to the bone.

 

[Baron d'Apcher]

Dark cutters are generally bovine (beef) and occasionally other ruminants like sheep and goats.  The color is indeed burgundy/purple and is an indication of stress or too high of a temperature prior to the slaughtering.  Pigs with PSS (porcine stress syndrome) under similar pre-slaughter conditions present PSE (pale, soft extrudative) meat and often darker firmer red meat.  Chickens however are not red meat like bovines and any surface bruising/bleeding was likely during the slaughtering process prior to it being bled.  Purdue (and other large producers) suffocates the birds with carbon dioxide or argon gas before bleeding them.

Sadly, super affordable prices come with significant consequences for the animal, the consumer and the environment.

[gfweb]

Has the white striped chicken breast issue been sorted out? When last I looked, the thought was that it was some kind of myopathy, perhaps viral.  Made for tough breasts.

[kayb]

I don't suppose there's any pleasant way, if you're a chicken or a cow or a pig, to lose your life so we humans can indulge in our favorite meals. But one of the several reasons I've gone to exclusively locally grown, small-farm-raised beef, pork and chicken is that at least I know that creature lived a pleasant life before it met its demise.

 

And my egg lady's chickens are just plain spoiled.

[dans]

This reminds me of the Rodney Dangerfield skit "Broken Leg of Lamb"

[Baron d'Apcher]

On 11/5/2018 at 6:12 PM, kayb said:

 But one of the several reasons I've gone to exclusively locally grown, small-farm-raised beef, pork and chicken is that at least I know that creature lived a pleasant life before it met its demise.

 

Agreed.  I work and live on a 28 acre family owned farm that pasture-raises pigs, chickens (both fed certified organic feed) and lamb (grass-fed) but invariably any pork/beef/lamb has to be slaughtered in a USDA facility for retail sale (chicken can be exempt with the certain requirements).  Slaughter is a considerable determinant in the final product.  An animal can live a cherished life but be clumsily killed resulting in a mediocre product.   Finding careful staff to work in a slaughterhouse is a challenge and it is not a job many aspire to have.  As  result, animals are often dispatched in a careless manner, which is unfortunate.  

Paying a premium for a product has its merits up and down the life-cycle of food animals.

Slaughter is the most overlooked aspect of meat.

[chromedome]

On 11/6/2018 at 9:46 PM, Baron d'Apcher said:

Slaughter is the most overlooked aspect of meat.

 

True that.

My late wife had a neighbour in California who raised two pigs. On slaughter day, they simply shot the first one right in the pen, alongside the second, and dragged it out to bleed, gut and rough-butcher it. The second pig spent that entire two hours screaming at the top of its lungs before going the same way. She was gifted several pieces of pork by way of apology for the noise, and said it was pretty clear which cuts were from the stressed hog.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

Believe it or not, things used to be even worse before this lady, Temple Grandin, started advocating for more humane treatment of animals for slaughter. Her work in best practices in Big Ag has improved things. They are still bad, but she has helped. I've seen the the HBO "Temple Grandin" movie and it is interesting and award winning. She's autistic, but has managed to get some pretty advanced degrees. A really interesting woman. If you are interested, there is a lot of stuff about her and her work on YouTube.

 

And yes the hormones including adrenaline released during extreme stress definitely affect the quality of the meat, so it is much to our advantage to reduce trauma to our meat animals.

[kayb]

Excellent made-for-TV (I think) movie on her that makes the cable TV rounds periodically. Interesting to me because she is autistic, and my grandson is as well.

 

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

Another way to get tough beef is to run cattle around before slaughter. Feed lots, where they stand around eating and pooping, creates more tender beef. So if you buy a whole cow from some producer, make sure it didn't get chased through the pasture for an hour before they caught it.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

[Baron d'Apcher]

8 hours ago, Nancy in Pátzcuaro said:

Another way to get tough beef is to run cattle around before slaughter. Feed lots, where they stand around eating and pooping, creates more tender beef. So if you buy a whole cow from some producer, make sure it didn't get chased through the pasture for an hour before they caught it.

 

Not really.  If feedlot steers (we rarely eat cows) don't move, it is because they don't have enough room to do so and they are young:  generally Angus breed around 24 months or younger.  Feedlot beef represents about 97% of US beef production and while most of it will qualify as "tender" it is more a result of young animals whose musculature is not fully developed, having been quickly  and somewhat artificially brought to market weight (1200lbs or so) by finishing them with corn, which they enjoy but don't know that they are not designed to properly digest  it (it makes them sick).  The corn is heavily subsidized, reliant on pesticides which flow into the ground or downstream to the Gulf of Mexico (killing lots of fish) and generates beef that is nutritionally deficient compared to 100% grass-fed. Corn-fed feedlot beef is terrible for the animals and terrible for the environment.  It (and other CAFO's) is the scourge of meat production and highlights an American affinity for abundant crap over quality and integrity.

Edited November 10, 2018 by Baron d'Apcher (log)