We went to Trader Joe’s today to buy some mushrooms and chicken for a simple stovetop braise for dinner, and we thought, Hey, let’s get some burgers for tomorrow. It’s all part of our effort to go grocery shopping less often, to plan meals ahead, to be efficient with our money and our time and to cut the impulse purchases.
At our TJ’s, however, the hamburger meat has undergone a tragic transformation this fall. Instead of being able to choose from ground sirloin, or ground chuck, or whatever, it is now all labeled “beef”. With the fat content, to be sure, but not with any more information.
Today, it was worse. The meat was labeled as coming from any of the following countries: Australia, New Zealand or Mexico.
Excuse me, but why would we in California want to buy meat that was raised a continent away? What is the purpose of that? How fresh could it be? How much additional cost is there in getting it shipped all the way over to the U.S.A.?
Have the buyers at Trader Joe’s lost their minds? Or do they think their customers are too stupid to care?
We try not to be snobby and ridiculous, but we like to buy locally whenever possible. And we like to know what exactly we’re feeding our family.
Has Trader Joe’s become too big, too corporate, too glib? The gimmicky Hawaiian shirts and down-home signage won’t mask the problem when the deals are fake, the meat is imported, and they won’t tell us exactly what it is that we’re buying.
1 response so far ↓
Fodon // November 20, 2008 at 9:50 pm |
Oh, I can answer this question! Even though it wasn’t much of a question.
So we all hear horror stories about the US beef industry, right? A lot of the horror stories are true. But there’s been a lot of bad news spread as well–including the mad cow business (and hoof and mouth, which people have no clue what that is, but it still freaks them out).
Earlier this year the country of origin rules were implement. This is something the US Beef Assoc. backed to inform people where they are indeed getting their beef from (most beef consumed in the US is imported, while US cattlemen are going out of business left and right because of the above mentioned bad publicity).
TJs has always purchased beef from reliable sources outside of the US–this is not new. That it’s now labled is new, and it’s a requirement.
It’s a big problem, all this. But with labeling and informed consumers, perhaps things will begin to change? For my family, though, it’s too late. My uncle and cousin are cowboys. Their cattle are free range, except right before market where they’re round up to the feed lot to put some fat on them. They’re also not given growth hormones or antibiotics (unless ill). But my uncle’s retiring and my cousin is getting out of the beef industry into something he can make money in; the wine industry.
And they have their own share of problems. It’s impossible for them to market their beef as free-range or almost organic because there are only a few slaughter houses for the beef to go to, where it gets mixed in with beef from Canada even. Local restaurateurs would love to say they’re using local beef–but it’s practically impossible for that to happen (and if they could get it to happen, it’d be a huge money loss).
I’ll stop. I could go on and on, but this is not a surprise for those of us in the Ag business.