Why can chicken be just fine going through packaging, delivery, and sitting on the shelves but after buying it from the store you have to use it in a few days before it goes “bad”?
In: Biology
Food spoils due to the action of bacteria and mold growing on the food and producing byproducts. Those organisms are present from the moment the animal is slaughtered but are kept from growing out of control by how the meat is stored.
The growth of those contaminants tends to be exponential, which means they are relatively low population for a while before reaching a critical point where they explode in population. We don’t mind or even notice the low population of bacteria and mold but when they massively increase the food is considered spoiled.
For chicken the bird was likely slaughtered about 3-5 days before it reaches the consumer. At that point it can only last a few more days in refrigeration before it might become dangerous.
Very quickly getting the chicken from farm to table. Sometimes replacing the atmosphere in the packaging with other gases.
Chicken doesn’t stay fresh long, but, the farming and distribution process is down to a mastered science. It gets to the shelf so fast, so that much of the “shelf” life ends up in your fridge.
If there was a major disruption to distribution channels, grocery would run out of chicken immediately.
In addition to other comments, the chicken will almost certainly heat up between you removing it from the refrigerated store shelf and putting into your fridge at home, allowing a period of warmth where bacteria can grow exponentially.
That fresh chicken actually only took a few days to arrive in your kitchen.
It’s refrigerated during all transport; the longer away from processing centres you live, the shorter the use before date on the packaging will actually be on the day it gets to the stores.
Apart from that thawed meet is frequently sold as well. That’s obviously not going bad because it gets flash frozen and only thawed in the shop right before putting it out for sale. And then again it’ll only last a few days.
But really, actual fresh chicken gets to your store/kitchen within 3 days of slaughter usually.
They don’t sit around in some ware house.
It gets slaughtered and processed, packaged and then is put on a truck to a distribution center. There it is unloaded, and put on the truck doing a delivery to your local store.
Thus 3 days being common with over night transport to and from a distribution centre.
The temperature is strictly controlled throughout the process of packaging, delivery, sitting in the store. It’s kept cold enough to not allow growth of harmful microorganisms in that time. The “best before” date is valid when it is stored under specific conditions, it certainly allows for some variation in temp for a brief period of time (e.g. till it gets from the fridge truck to the store fridge).
But once out of the store fridge, it is transported to yours in less than ideal conditions temperature-wise. It can go bad even before you get home, if your car is hot enough and the trip home takes a certain time.
Refrigerated grocery store meat doesn’t stay at refrigerated temps from when you put it in your car to when it goes in your fridge. You can mitigate this by buying meat last. I’ve got a 20 minute drive from the grocery store to my house, so I generally try to put a couple frozen items in with the meat.
There is a period of time between when the chicken is slaughtered and processed and it goes bad. It’s not a huge window (7-8 days or so) and perhaps half of that is between the time it’s processed, sent to distribution warehouses, and ends up on the grocery store cooler. Then it sells through in a couple days, and can last a few more in your fridge before it goes bad. Fresh meats are blast cooled to get them to low temperatures as quickly as possible after processing and kept at lower temps in transport and on grocery coolers than typical home fridge, which extends the life a little.
Any non-frozen raw chicken I buy comes with a best-before date… I just reference that regardless of how many days it’s been in my fridge vs the store’s. Yes, the period of transportation from store to home can make a difference. But also the chicken itself has heat capacity. It doesn’t instantly go from cold to room temperature just because you took it out of the fridge.
But agreed with others here, good practice to minimize the time it spends out of refrigeration. Pick it up last in the store. If you are buying any frozen food at the same time, bag the chicken together with the frozen food. When you get home it’s your first priority into the fridge.
Conversely, if I’m walking home from the grocery store when it’s “fridge temperature” outside or cooler, (I use a folding cart), I’ll put the raw meat package in a part of the cart where it’s in contact with the cold air, since that will keep it colder than being in contact with anything warmer in the cart.
Ask the checker to wrap it up in it’s own bag. Get it refrigerated quickly. Turn down (colder) your refrigerator. Keep it wrapped up. Do all this and you might get an extra day. Really, you should just freeze it (wrapped). You can thaw it in a few hours anytime. Still tastes good! Mmmm… 🍗🍗🍗
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