Meat+Poultry - April 2018 - 48

PA C K A G I N G S O L U T I O N S

fluid and it is the same color as the
carboxymyglobin, and over the course
of roughly three days, there's enough
oxymyoglobin formation that it starts
to deteriorate and turn brown. So, it
will display for three days fine, but
if it's in the mother bag, it lasts for
28 days. So, if the retailer gets it at
14, he just puts the fresh meat in the
display case every day like Walmart
does, and he doesn't have any problem
merchandising it. The mother bag is
probably the highest volume packaging
format that we see in case-ready.
M+P: What are the advantages and
disadvantages of the various methods
of case-ready ground beef packaging?
Siegel: Well, the stretch wrapped tray
pack is the same format that's used with
the mother bag. That's why you see it
so often. You'll see it in stores that don't
have butchers. That's the easiest format

for a butcher to use. The only problem
is once you make it, if you have a
butcher, he makes enough everyday
maybe, but you can't trust it. Some
meat will fade in one day, some meat
will fade in three days. It's very hard to
control the color for any length of time
at all. So, it's problematic from that
standpoint. But if you have an in-store
butcher, you can work around that stuff.
The chub is a great format because
it's a barrier, the film as a barrier can
prevent any surface oxidation, and
then once you open it up it blooms
bright red almost immediately upon
exposing it to atmospheric oxygen. It
will last approximately 35 days without
a problem. You're only worried about
microbiological shelf life rather than
color shelf life in a chub.
You can cube out a truck too, with
a chub. You can put 40,000 lbs. on a
truck. With a mother bag, you can

only put about 18,000 lbs. If you look
at a box with a mother bag, a box you
would normally put 40 lbs. in, you can
only get about 10 lbs., 20 lbs. maybe.
M+P: Are there disadvantages to
merchandising using chub packaging?
Siegel: I think the consumer prefers
to see bright red meat in the traditional
package. Consumers are really getting
used to seeing vacuum packages and
vacuum package purple, especially
with all the fresh meals. Those are all
vacuum-packaged purple. Some retailers
promote it as the packaging format of
choice. Wegman's most notably.
They do a lot of skin packs in
Canada. They'll have skin packs
where they're using vacuum purple.
Consumers seem to like it.
With the chub, you're not sure
what's in there, you can't see the color,
you can't tell if it's fresh. There's some

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Meat+Poultry - April 2018

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