Why does Wal-Mart sell meat injected with water and chemicals?
If you read this space regularly, you know I’m a tad obsessed about the meat at Wal-Mart. It’s not that I plan to eat any of it soon, it’s that I think people ought to know exactly what gets done to it. I’ve been following the story Wal-Mart suppliers gassing the meat with carbon monoxide for months, and I knew that Wal-Mart watered down its meat but I didn’t quite understand how much until I read this outraged letter to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:
I didn’t take the time to inspect the entire meat department but I did look at a small sampling of those cuts around me.
Ham………….contained……23% solution
Chicken Breasts.contained……15% solution
Pork Roast……contained……12% solution
Ground Round….contained……15% solution
Chuck Roast…..contained……11% solution
Beef Fillet…..contained……20% solutionI have no doubt in my mind that this is (sorry about the pun), just the tip of the iceburg. If you carry this through, you will realize that we’re paying considerably more per pound of “meat” than the label implies. While we believe we’re buying a 5-pound fillet for $4.96 per pound or $24.80 total, in reality, it’s costing considerably more. Divide the price for the four pounds of actual meat when you subtract for a pound for the solution and you’ll see that we paid $6.20 for a pound for the actual meat.
Now I realize this guy didn’t do a scientific survey or anything, but Wal-Mart told the NYT that “a majority of its fresh offerings are enhanced with a 6 to 12 percent solution of water, salt, sodium phosphate and natural flavorings.” Perhaps they have their math a little off?
If Wal-Mart isn’t selling water in its meat in order to rip people off, what exactly is all that solution doing in there? Here’s Wal-Mart’s explanation to the Hartford Courant:
Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters told me that all its case-ready beef (packaged at the processing plant) is “enhanced with a maximum 12 percent solution of water, sodium phosphate, salt, and natural flavorings. As a result, case-ready beef is superior in tenderness, texture, juiciness, and flavor to non-enhanced beef cuts and provides a preferred eating experience.
[Emphasis added]“
So let me get this straight. Wal-Mart saves money buying its meat from factory farms. Wal-Mart saves money by not hiring meatcutters so that they won’t unionize. Wal-Mart saves money by selling its customers water at the same price by weight they charge for meat. Yet they’re trying to tell us they sell meat injected with water and chemicals because we’ll get a “preferred eating experience?”
How dumb do they think we are?
I made the worse mistake of my life last week and purchased some hamburger meat from Walmart. After cooking it, I gave a small bowl of it to my dog and within the hour she was throwing up. For 3 horrific days my dog vomited and and had diarrea and the clinic could not save her. My dog died a horrific and painful death,
Dogs should not be fed hamburger.
I am a public health/preventive medicine physcian who wrote two e-mails (Feb 26, 2010 and and April 2 , 2010) to Michael Duke of Wal-Mart demanding that he respond to my complaints about Wal-Mart’s chemically altered meat products which are unhealthy and a threat to consumer health.
He did not respond to either e-mail.
So please contact me with contacts at the FDA, the USDA and the CDC that you might know of so that I can pursue my goal of protecting consumers from this tainted meat
Thanks
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa
ralippin@aol.com
I was just thinking of this. It seems everytime I eat ground meat at walmart I have very strange dreams, difficulty sleeping and 2-3 hours after consumption my heart starts racing. This leads me to believe there is some enhancement chemical at work which my counter act with some prescriptions I have.
All the ground beef that Walmart sells is injected with carbon monoxide! They do it to keep it RED to make it LOOK still fresh when infact its probably spoiled! Yes you read that right CARBON MONOXIDE!
My husband bought steaks at Walmart, which I cooked on the grill. The texture was rubbery and the meat so salty, we threw them away. I do not use salt in cooking as my husband is on high blood pressure medicine. A week later, I had a pot roast that I bought from Walmart (mind you, these are the only two times we have bought meat from them and only did so because we were at the store anyway). I put the pot roast in the crock pot and cooked it all day. When we sat down to eat it, it was rubbery and extremely salty. We threw it away as well. I pulled the package out of the trash, and to my surprise, it indicated that there was sodium, salt, beef flavoring, etc. added to the meat.
Walmart should be ashamed of themselves. This could be a hazard to people’s health as many, many people should not have a high sodium intake. I will contact the FDA and USDA. What about contacting the media?
Janet
Added, I would use the term ‘saturated’. Bought extra lean burger from WallyWorld (OK, Walmart in case someone is confused). When I went to make patties the bloody water was dripping from the meat and the patties would not bind. I had to wrap it in a towel and squeeze.
Walmart is OFF my list for meat products. This is a blatant rip off of consumers.