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Yeah I personally stopped buy chicken years ago for mostly ethical reasons but I think Costco getting into the chicken game will probably be a net positive. Re

Yeah I personally stopped buy chicken years ago for mostly ethical reasons but I think Costco getting into the chicken game will probably be a net positive. Reason being that for one, Costco was one of the first grocers to start replacing items with Organic alternatives, and in general, they usually demands higher quality goods than other grocers. For example, compare the ingredient list for Delimex taquitos from Costco to your supermarket and it's basically half the size... or Campbell's "Simply" Chicken Noodle soup to what's sold at the grocer - again about half the ingredients. Even those $5 chickens Costco sells are antibiotic/hormone/steroid-free humane-certified Foster-Farms chickens. Then there's employee treatment. Costco has a long history of being one of the better employers in the country. They pay their employees well, pay for people to attend college, don't require a lot of interaction with irate customers thanks to their no deadline any reason return policy and generally promote internally rather than hiring outsiders to leadership roles. Compare that to the average chicken farmer who has to buy all of their own equipment that the big companies are constantly requiring them to update at their own expense, raise chickens they don't own like a horrific daycare center at very low return, all while being exposed to chemicals/drugs they're being forced to use and it's kind of a nightmare. Costco cares about their brand image, their customers and their employees... I expect this will end up being a good thing.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ethbro 8y ago
If you eat meat, the most ethical thing you can do is eat Perdue chicken (assuming you're not going sustainable aquaculture seafood). Not organic, just regular. Because long before everyone else, they decided to do what they could to weed antibiotics out of their entire production chain. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/perdue-antibiotic-free-chicken-meat-resistance/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/perdue-antib... As someone who grew up in the poultry pathology industry, there are three important metrics for commercial chicken meat production: (1) mortality rate (how many chickens die), (2) feed conversion ratio (how efficiently incoming feed is turned into usable meat), & (3) time to slaughter. Everything else (price, environment impact) is a consequence of those figures or optimizations made to target them. Perdue, long before it was trendy (~2002) decided for market and moral reasons they were going to reorganize their operations, and those of their suppliers, to apply pre-antibiotic husbandry best practices and limit antibiotic use. It didn't save them money. Pre-emptive dosing with antibiotics is done precisely because it makes money (by decreasing loss / all cause mortality) -- if it didn't, no one would do it in the first place. They didn't have to do this. Hell, most people didn't even care about antibiotics in animal production then. But they did it because they thought there would be a market for it, because they thought it was possible, and because they thought it was the right thing to do. Costco may be an ethical company, and they may be doing this for the right reasons, but they're following. I'd rather reward someone who chose to lead in making the world a better place. PS: There are other ecological reasons to prefer chicken if you're eating terrestrial meat, but I didn't want to ramble on. Suffice to say, the feed conversion ratio on chicken is incredible.
- vermontdevil 8y ago
  Just small correction it’s Perdue. I know common error here.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    Fixed! Thanks for pointing it out.
- ColanR 8y ago
  This feels a lot like an ad for Perdue (apologies if it isn't).
  - colecut 8y ago
    Do you remember when the world wasn't consumed with ads? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    You've got me. I've surreptitiously built a HN identity for years so that I could finally cash in on that sweet poultry guerilla marketing cash.
    - killjoywashere 8y ago
      I got a similar hit on Wikipedia when I tried to start the article on a company, which happens to be a YC alum. I was just comparing VPS providers, I knew this company was in the space because of HN, and noted the hole in Wikipedia, so I started the article as a way to fill in my own knowledge. Ho. Lee. Sheeeit. There were some admins looking to grind serious axes about "commercial influence". Yet I was behaving more like Consumer Reports. Job got done, but wow.
      - ethbro 8y ago
        I tried to limit the snark, because parent's not wrong. There's a ridiculous amount of astroturfing out there. I haven't had too much experience with Wikipedia, but I absolutely believe your story. Their hierarchy is... interesting.
babypuncher 8y ago
Costco does all these pro-consumer, pro-sustainability, and pro labor things while still undercutting everyone else on price. And they still make money hand over fist. It proves that every other company mistreating their livestock, filling their preserved goods with god-knows-what, or underpaying their staff is doing it out of pure profit motive rather than out of necessity to remain competitive.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  Well, maybe -- Costco benefits from economies of scale and negotiation that don't exist for those smaller vendors. It doesn't cost everyone the same price to produce the same product.
- brandonmenc 8y ago
  > And they still make money hand over fist. That's a lot easier to do when you only carry a fraction of the UPCs that say, Walmart does.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Surely most retailers only carry a fraction of the UPCs as Walmart does. Amazon beats Walmart, but who else? Wikipedia estimates 120,000 items per Walmart location and 35 million sold by Walmarts online. In comparison, McMaster-Carr has 570,000 products. Walmart is huge.
  - PhantomGremlin 8y ago
    The number of different SKUs is totally absurd. As of right now my local supermarket (subsidiary of Kroger) has the following: Cheerios 12 oz Cheerios 18 oz family size Cheerios 20 oz giant size I'm not talking about "honey nut", or "multi grain", or "cinnamon oat crunch", those three are just the basic Cheerios. It's way beyond stupid. This idiocy is the fault of both the manufacturers and retailers.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
      I wonder if there would be a market for cereals in plain plastic bags kinda like rice and beans... Just the same bag as the inside of that cheerios box in 3oz increments with a plain label.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ethbro 8y ago

If you eat meat, the most ethical thing you can do is eat Perdue chicken (assuming you're not going sustainable aquaculture seafood). Not organic, just regular. Because long before everyone else, they decided to do what they could to weed antibiotics out of their entire production chain. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/perdue-antibiotic-free-chicken-meat-resistance/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/perdue-antib... As someone who grew up in the poultry pathology industry, there are three important metrics for commercial chicken meat production: (1) mortality rate (how many chickens die), (2) feed conversion ratio (how efficiently incoming feed is turned into usable meat), & (3) time to slaughter. Everything else (price, environment impact) is a consequence of those figures or optimizations made to target them. Perdue, long before it was trendy (~2002) decided for market and moral reasons they were going to reorganize their operations, and those of their suppliers, to apply pre-antibiotic husbandry best practices and limit antibiotic use. It didn't save them money. Pre-emptive dosing with antibiotics is done precisely because it makes money (by decreasing loss / all cause mortality) -- if it didn't, no one would do it in the first place. They didn't have to do this. Hell, most people didn't even care about antibiotics in animal production then. But they did it because they thought there would be a market for it, because they thought it was possible, and because they thought it was the right thing to do. Costco may be an ethical company, and they may be doing this for the right reasons, but they're following. I'd rather reward someone who chose to lead in making the world a better place. PS: There are other ecological reasons to prefer chicken if you're eating terrestrial meat, but I didn't want to ramble on. Suffice to say, the feed conversion ratio on chicken is incredible.

vermontdevil 8y ago
Just small correction it’s Perdue. I know common error here.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Fixed! Thanks for pointing it out.
ColanR 8y ago
This feels a lot like an ad for Perdue (apologies if it isn't).
- colecut 8y ago
  Do you remember when the world wasn't consumed with ads? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
- ethbro 8y ago
  You've got me. I've surreptitiously built a HN identity for years so that I could finally cash in on that sweet poultry guerilla marketing cash.
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    I got a similar hit on Wikipedia when I tried to start the article on a company, which happens to be a YC alum. I was just comparing VPS providers, I knew this company was in the space because of HN, and noted the hole in Wikipedia, so I started the article as a way to fill in my own knowledge. Ho. Lee. Sheeeit. There were some admins looking to grind serious axes about "commercial influence". Yet I was behaving more like Consumer Reports. Job got done, but wow.
    - ethbro 8y ago
      I tried to limit the snark, because parent's not wrong. There's a ridiculous amount of astroturfing out there. I haven't had too much experience with Wikipedia, but I absolutely believe your story. Their hierarchy is... interesting.

babypuncher 8y ago

Costco does all these pro-consumer, pro-sustainability, and pro labor things while still undercutting everyone else on price. And they still make money hand over fist. It proves that every other company mistreating their livestock, filling their preserved goods with god-knows-what, or underpaying their staff is doing it out of pure profit motive rather than out of necessity to remain competitive.

cjbprime 8y ago
Well, maybe -- Costco benefits from economies of scale and negotiation that don't exist for those smaller vendors. It doesn't cost everyone the same price to produce the same product.
brandonmenc 8y ago
> And they still make money hand over fist. That's a lot easier to do when you only carry a fraction of the UPCs that say, Walmart does.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Surely most retailers only carry a fraction of the UPCs as Walmart does. Amazon beats Walmart, but who else? Wikipedia estimates 120,000 items per Walmart location and 35 million sold by Walmarts online. In comparison, McMaster-Carr has 570,000 products. Walmart is huge.
- PhantomGremlin 8y ago
  The number of different SKUs is totally absurd. As of right now my local supermarket (subsidiary of Kroger) has the following: Cheerios 12 oz Cheerios 18 oz family size Cheerios 20 oz giant size I'm not talking about "honey nut", or "multi grain", or "cinnamon oat crunch", those three are just the basic Cheerios. It's way beyond stupid. This idiocy is the fault of both the manufacturers and retailers.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    I wonder if there would be a market for cereals in plain plastic bags kinda like rice and beans... Just the same bag as the inside of that cheerios box in 3oz increments with a plain label.