PCFormat Forum Archive

Frozen chicken horror

Bloemfontein - South Africans have been buying and eating tons of old, repackaged frozen chickens for years.

After a frozen chicken has passed its expiry date it is washed, injected, rebranded and sold again in leading supermarkets.

Reprocessed frozen chickens produced by Supreme Poultry, the third-biggest supplier of the birds in South Africa, are also given new expiry dates.

Country Bird Holdings, Supreme’s holding company, this week said the practice was legal.

Supreme Poultry supplies Pick n Pay, Shoprite/Checkers and other outlets with frozen chickens.

Thami Bolani, chairperson of the National Consumer Forum (NCF), slammed the practice yesterday, calling it unacceptable and misleading.

Bolani said the NCF would urgently address the matter because expiry dates within the current system “mean nothing”.

Instructed by management

Three sources with first-hand knowledge of Supreme Poultry’s operations at its Botshabelo plant told Rapport they had been instructed by management to repackage old chicken.

Johan Matthee, a former production manager at the plant, said in the almost two years he worked there, “hundreds of tons” of unsold chickens were transported back to Supreme and reprocessed.

Matthee is involved in a labour dispute with the company.

He said an expired chicken thawed for 24 hours at room temperature after it had been transported back to Supreme. Some of the chickens were treated with chlorine to reduce bacterial load.

He said chickens were never scientifically tested to determine levels of micro-organisms.

They were then injected with brine, repackaged and sold with a new expiry date.

Two other former Supreme employees confirmed Matthee’s version and said the practice had been “continuous” since 2004.

Within the law

Tish Stewart, spokesperson for Country Bird, which owns Supreme Poultry, said everything the company did complied with “the highest level of production practices” and that the company had won awards for the hygienic condition of its plants.

“Reworking of chickens returned by clients is permitted by law within certain guidelines and the product may be used for specified purposes after reworking, including human consumption, animal consumption or rendering.

“Reworking happens in Supreme Poultry and throughout the industry continuously,” she said.

This is disputed by Wouter de Wet, production director of Rainbow Chickens. Rainbow would never reprocess chickens because they did not know how the chickens had been handled after leaving the company’s depot, he said.

Stewart further confirmed that some of the expired poultry was treated with chlorine.

“It is accepted as being best practice in the normal course of processing and in reworking, as chicken is sold with the skin on and the law makes provision for this,” she said.

Any reworked chicken was placed in new packaging with new production and expiry dates.

Investigation

“It is important to note that most products are distributed on the same day of production and the perception that products are reworked for further storage is not true, particularly in view of the fact that Supreme produces more than 2 000 tons of products a week.”

She did not reply to specific questions about the issuing of “new” expiry dates for products that had expired.

A spokesperson for Shoprite/Checkers confirmed that they would be investigating Supreme’s chicken, but said they had strict quality control measures to ensure the safety of products.

Melinda White of Pick n Pay’s legal department confirmed that Supreme produced almost a third of the store’s “No Name” frozen chickens.

She said Supreme’s return policy stipulated that all chickens sent back would go to the rendering plant, where meat is processed into bone meal.

She said Supreme was a member of regulatory bodies that did not allow the renewal of expiry dates.

News24 source

jamin_za wrote:Rainbow, Farmer Brown and Bonny Bird is all Rainbow chicken, and they don't employ these shenanigans - so as long as you buy those products your chicken is not second hand.
Not sure about Woolies chicken, but it's probably also Rainbow as well.

All the major fast food places KFC, Nandos, Chicken Licken etc use Rainbow so they will be okay to eat from as well...

StarBound wrote:Maybe it isnt a bad thing? Means that it is 2000 ton a week that doesnt get thrown away. But is it safe for human consumption? Are the right steps taken to ensure that the expired one is in the exact same consumable condition that it was prior to refurbished ...reprocessed chicken?

Cost wise it has 3 bad implications.
Firstly if it is the producer of the chicken they loose a lot of money if they dont use this method. Their input costs would be higher than their manufacturing cost without a reclaim of funds.
Secondly written off stock. It is already a loss but can be sold off the poorer people at a reduced cost but again it is expired so you run the risk of beggers cant be choosers will sue because they get sick on what they can afford.
Thirdly the process costs money again. While your base cost is gone you add more manufacturing cost to the mix. How much markup is there in the fresh chicken you buy to compensate for the reprocessed chickens?

On a final note. I prefer fresh food. So should it be continued they should seperate into fresh and reprocessed catagories. The question now is just who will buy expired chicken and what would cost implications be for fresh produce?

StarBound wrote:Maybe it isnt a bad thing? Means that it is 2000 ton a week that doesnt get thrown away. But is it safe for human consumption? Are the right steps taken to ensure that the expired one is in the exact same consumable condition that it was prior to refurbished ...reprocessed chicken?

Cost wise it has 3 bad implications.
Firstly if it is the producer of the chicken they loose a lot of money if they dont use this method. Their input costs would be higher than their manufacturing cost without a reclaim of funds.
Secondly written off stock. It is already a loss but can be sold off the poorer people at a reduced cost but again it is expired so you run the risk of beggers cant be choosers will sue because they get sick on what they can afford.
Thirdly the process costs money again. While your base cost is gone you add more manufacturing cost to the mix. How much markup is there in the fresh chicken you buy to compensate for the reprocessed chickens?

On a final note. I prefer fresh food. So should it be continued they should seperate into fresh and reprocessed catagories. The question now is just who will buy expired chicken and what would cost implications be for fresh produce?

Prime wrote:we have water filter jugs which remove most of it.

but water doesn't stay chlorinated, leaving it in the sun or high levels of agitation can remove most of the chlorine.

Prime wrote:yeah.

but reverse osmosis strips everything out the water. ABI then has to remineralise it.

jamin_za wrote: All the major fast food places KFC, Nandos, Chicken Licken etc use Rainbow so they will be okay to eat from as well...

According to an African Business Review report earlier this year, Supreme Poultry now also supplies chicken to KFC and Nando's.