Some things at Costco are just hard to resist.
Freshly made bagels? Yes, please.
Kerrygold Butter for a fraction of the cost at a regular grocery store? Check.
And how about Costco’s signature rotisserie chicken, a perennial bestseller often praised for its affordability and convenience for the bargain price of $4.99? It’s hard to pass it up.
Yet the chicken is drawing renewed scrutiny after a recent report highlighted persistent food-safety concerns.
While the product remains widely enjoyed, shoppers may want to pay closer attention to handling and cooking precautions.
The wholesale giant sells more than 100 million chickens each year at a $4.99 price point. Source: Seeking Alpha
A nonprofit food-safety group, Farm Forward, found that Costco’s supplier, Lincoln Premiu…
Some things at Costco are just hard to resist.
Freshly made bagels? Yes, please.
Kerrygold Butter for a fraction of the cost at a regular grocery store? Check.
And how about Costco’s signature rotisserie chicken, a perennial bestseller often praised for its affordability and convenience for the bargain price of $4.99? It’s hard to pass it up.
Yet the chicken is drawing renewed scrutiny after a recent report highlighted persistent food-safety concerns.
While the product remains widely enjoyed, shoppers may want to pay closer attention to handling and cooking precautions.
The wholesale giant sells more than 100 million chickens each year at a $4.99 price point. Source: Seeking Alpha
A nonprofit food-safety group, Farm Forward, found that Costco’s supplier, Lincoln Premium Poultry, repeatedly received the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s lowest safety rating — Category 3 — for elevated levels of salmonella contamination over multiple years. Source: Farm Forward
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “about 1 in 25 packages of chicken at the grocery store are contaminated with salmonella.” Source: CDC
*Costco sells more than 100 million birds a year. *UCG/Getty Images
A rotisserie chicken is typically pre-cooked and ready to eat; however, the report suggests that the source poultry may carry an elevated microbial risk even before it reaches shoppers.
The USDA standard allows for a certain percentage of positive salmonella samples in processing plants; a USDA Category 3 rating signals that a plant exceeds those thresholds, raising questions about baseline safety performance.
Related: Costco shares key plan to keep prices down
While reduced to a percentage statistic, the implications are meaningful: Contamination before cooking may increase the risk of illness if reheating, improper storage, or cross-contamination occurs.
In other words, even “ready-to-eat” items demand careful handling. The report notes that although no official recall has been announced in connection with the current findings, the last major recall tied to Costco’s rotisserie chicken dates back more than a decade.
Costco has previously faced food-safety issues tied to its chicken products.
In 2013, approximately 39,755 pounds of rotisserie chicken from a Costco store in San Francisco were recalled due to possible Salmonella Heidelberg contamination. Later, in 2016, the USDA issued a health alert over rotisserie chicken salad sold at a Costco store in Washington, tied to illnesses with the strain salmonella , as reported in Supermarket News.