Know your dinner: trackable Chicken
Peeled Snacks' international headquarters is located in a rather nice neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York called Park Slope. Park Slope looks like Sesame Street, has the cuisine of Manhattan, and has the politics of San Francisco. Park Slope has great live music, a fantastic food coop, and two very credible Farmer's Markets. It also now has chicken that you can spy on.
Park Slope's grocery stores have the usual range of food available, from whatever slop Chef Boy-R-D is slinging to a growing smattering of organic produce. Bit by bit, Organic Meat has been sneaking in, but Organic meat is tricky- just because it's organic doesn't mean that the animal was humanely raised, or fed an appropriate diet (as in the case of organic beef, which can be fed organic corn, which cows are NOT supposed to eat).
But our local grocery stores are now offering Murray's family farmed chicken, a delightfully affordable meat option that promises a bunch of things for which Peeled Snacks is always looking- no hormones; family farmed; free ranged. And now Murray's is offering a BONUS: all their packs have a code by which you can use the internet to learn about your chicken! How accountable is THAT?!?!
Unfortunately, it's not quite as accountable as I might like- I used Murray's website to track my latest chicken dinner and learned not specifically about the chicken but rather the chicken's farm of origin, and really only a map telling me where the farm is. But at least it's a start. At least it's a first step for a company that has the power to feed a lot of people to show some genuine accountability and concern for the quality of what they sell.
As a trend, this step by Murray's represents a great opportunity for food manufacturers to turn accountability into marketing. If a company is proud about what they're selling, they can use packaging and the internet to brag about their goods, and help inform their consumers who'll likely come back for more. Such steps can also make lower quality competitors look like chumps.
Hopefully Peeled Snacks can soon follow Murray's example- we know all the farms where we get our yummy ingredients, and we have a LOT to brag about. We'll work on being able to show off to you what you're eating. That'll be fun.
Coming soon: Peeled Snacks' best kept secret REVEALED!
Peeled Skinny sincerely hopes that you're having a great start to your decade. Happy Snacking,
Ian K, Peeled Skinny