Jul 6, 2006 8:40 pm US/Eastern
Red Meat: Appearances Are Often Deceiving
Some In Congress Wants Use Of Carbon Monoxide To Stop
by Kirstin Cole
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
When you reach into the meat case at the supermarket how do you tell whether the meat is fresh? The look? Sell-by date? Its bright red color?
"It seems to me we have consumer deception going on," said Consumer Reports' Geoff Martin, who has Ph.D, so he knows a thing or two about that which he speaks.
He's talking about the latest meat treatment to keep your dinner looking good for weeks, even months. It's all in the packing -- where manufacturers add a trace amount of carbon monoxide -- to beef up the meat's color -- and keep it a bright cherry red. It's FDA approved, but there's no disclosure anywhere on the packaging that carbon monoxide has been used. Some packages may look great, but smell rotten.
And now some lawmakers want it banned. A congressional committee wrote to the FDA in February saying the process "alters the color of meat and fish to make those substances appear edible beyond the time when they may decompose sufficiently to be contaminated by one or more dangerous toxins."
But the meat industry insists these products are safe, according to Jeremy Russell of the National Meat Association.
"When you have a spoiled meat you smell it immediately," Russell said. "The research has never found this process to mask spoilage in anyway, so consumers really aren't going to be at any risk."
Still, when Consumer Reports did their own lab testing, Martin said the results were rather un-appetizing.
"Out of 10 packages, three of them, by the time they reached their sell-by date, had reached spoilage levels of bacteria," Martin said.
Stores that don't sell meat processed with carbon monoxide include: Kroger, Acme, Jewel-Osco, Stop & Shop, Publix, Food Lion, A & P, Waldbaum's, Food Emporium, Super Fresh, H-E-B, Meijer, Giant Eagle, Pathmark, Whole Foods, Wegmans and Spartan Stores.
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