Frozen Chicken Wars Heat Up : Poultry: How cold is frozen? California and federal chicken producers can’t agree.
A war of words will have to suffice while California chicken producers await their day in federal court in a long-running campaign to remove the word “fresh” from labels on out-of-state chickens that have been allegedly frozen, thawed and then placed in local meat counters as if shipped right from the nearest San Joaquin Valley coop.
Cries of “fraud” and “unscrupulous” have been used by California producers to describe what they call the frozen-thaw-fresh practice employed by some producers in the Southeastern United States who they say ship rock-hard broilers to the California market, the nation’s largest.
“Ninety percent of our product is sold fresh or refrigerated to 28 degrees,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Industry Federation. “The other producing states want to ship their broilers at any temperature above zero degrees. So product coming into this state can be chilled to zero, thawed and sold as fresh. In our opinion, that isn’t fresh.”
Gary Kushner, attorney with Hogan & Hartson in Washington, who represents national poultry trade groups insists that broilers raised in the Southeastern United States and shipped to California “are not frozen.”
“The average temperature (Southeastern producers) try to maintain during transport is closer to the mid-20s then below that,” he said. “There is no need to bring (poultry) product to very low temperatures because it only increases the producers’ energy and storage costs.”
Kushner said he doesn’t know the average temperature of Southeastern-raised broilers by the time they reach California outlets. But regardless of possible temperature fluctuations in transit, he said that according to the federal Poultry Products Inspection Act, a chicken is legally considered fresh as long as it isn’t chilled below zero degrees.
Scientists consider the freezing point for chicken is between 28 degrees and 29 degrees.
“Wherever the temperature (on a bird’s carcass) reaches 28 degrees,” said Glenn W. Froning Ph.D., a food science professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, “that area would be considered frozen.”
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The feud is unusual in the food industry, particularly within the confines of a single commodity group such as chicken, because regional interests are normally loath to criticize other producers for fear that the sniping may taint the image of everyone’s product.
Poultry producers are particularly unlikely candidates for a quarrel because the industry normally presents a united front to weather increasing attacks from consumer advocates and Congress about high levels of contamination in uncooked chickens.
But the “do not fault one’s chicken colleague” credo has cracked. Now it’s pretty much California against the rest of the chicken world. The chief adversaries are Arkansas and Georgia, the nation’s top two producers.
Most California broiler production is sold within the state, which has the nation’s highest per-capita rate of chicken consumption--80 pounds per person vs. the U.S. average of 73 pounds. At stake is about $4 billion in fresh broiler sales in the state; about half those sales go to California producers.
The conflict dates back to 1988 but heated up last June when state Sen. Dan McCorquodale (D-Modesto) introduced a bill that would prohibit previously frozen chicken--defined in the bill as any bird held at 25 degrees or less for a period of 24 hours or more--from being labeled “fresh.” The state Senate and Assembly unanimously passed the bill and it was signed into law by Gov. Pete Wilson last September.
Shortly thereafter, the Arkansas Poultry Federation, the National Broiler Council and the American Meat Institute filed suit in U.S. District Court to overturn the law; they claimed it was preempted by the federal Poultry Products Inspection Act.
Federal Judge David Levi agreed with the three trade groups and ruled against California in December.
California producers appealed and were granted an expedited hearing in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. It’s expected the case will be scheduled some time next month.
“The intent behind the California law was simply to protect local markets,” said Kushner, who represented the three trade groups. “I seriously doubt it was intended to protect California consumers from ‘unscrupulous’ out-of-state producers.”
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In its appeal, California has garnered the support of Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America and the California Home Economics Assn.
Consumers Union, in a brief filed with the Court of Appeals, claims that some out-of-state chickens are not only frozen for shipping but “stored for months, or even a year, in a frozen state” before being sold.
Meanwhile, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy commissioned a review of the Federal regulation in February. Among the areas being studied: changes in poultry’s physical characteristics at different temperatures, how spoilage becomes a factor in various refrigerated conditions, and how potentially harmful bacteria react to temperature changes.
“We think consumers would be appalled,” Mattos said, “if they knew out-of-state chickens were frozen, thawed and sold as fresh.”
