My Dominick's Horror Story

I went to the Dominick's Store on Canal and Roosevelt on Feb. 17th 2011 to pick up a few items for dinner. I was looking for the Blade Cut Lamb chops that they had just put on sale that day. We went over to the meat counter and noticed that there weren't any out. We asked the lady in the meat department if they had any. She said, they were just now packaging them and putting them out. Mind you, this was after 3p.m. The store opens at 7 a.m. I picked what I thought were the best packages of lamb and remarked to my husband how nice and pink they looked. We made our purchase and drove home. As I opened the first package of lamb, I was hit with the most horrible smell. I couldn't believe that it was coming from this "fresh" pack of meat I had just purchased and that they had JUST packaged. I opened the other 4 packs and they were all the same. SPOILED!!! I couldn't understand how they could have even packaged the meat. It smelled that bad. I was immediately drawn back to the color of the meat. Beautiful pink and fresh looking meat. I remembered a story about stores treating their meat with carbon monoxide to "hold" the color. I also remember Safeway, the store that owns Dominick's saying in 2006 that they would NOT be selling meat like this. I guess they changed their mind. We called the store and told them what happened. I recognized the voice on the other end as the same woman who brought the meat out. She was the manager of the department and only gave me a quick reply of, "You can bring it back. No apologies, just bring it back. My next call was to the corporate office of Dominick's. They were a bit more apologetic. I filed my formal complaint and my husband took the meat all the way back to the store. When he saw the lady, her attitude had changed. I guess corporate had got to her before he did. She apologized again and again and all the lamb had been removed from the shelf. She did offer up this one tidbit. She said that the guy who packaged the meat said it smelled like that because it was, "WILD" lamb! Are you kidding me? If this guy doesn't know the difference between wild and rancid, he should not be working around meat. The woman had the nerve to offer my husband a steak. He told her he didn't want any meat from Dominick's anymore. "It ain't all bad", she replied as he walked away. Well, that is my Dominick's horror story. From the looks of the newspaper and daily news stories about Dominick's today, I see my story is not an isolated incident. Unfortunately, it also shines light on what our government is allowing for our stores to sell us. Why treat the meat with chemicals at all? It only leads to more cases of bad meat being sold. The opportunity for consumers to become ill from eating stale dated meat is huge! Be careful out there. The "sell by" date means nothing. I have provided a link about carbon monoxide treated meat.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/21/earlyshow/health/main1332952.shtml

Peace and healthy eating,
Jocelyn